Focusing on the recent spate of violent incidents, Weibo user @躺下听风雨 remarked: "If [similar incidents] occur again, I think the government should take responsibility. They just throw people into society and take care of nothing."

While China has made recent efforts to expand insurance coverage , they have been insufficient; in recent years, only 45,000 people had been covered for free outpatient treatment and only 7,000 for free inpatient care. In Beijing, for example, only around ten percent of the mental patients are provided with inpatient treatment. The rest receive none, either because they cannot afford related fees or because hospitals do not have the space for them.

While some are shocked by theses recent headlines and figures, user @验证狗啊验证 argued that Chinese families provide a much-needed support system: "Most of China's mentally ill are being taken care of by their family and are out there in society." But the comment then took a darker turn: "Do not underestimate your possibility of 'having bad luck'. If you run into them someday, just remember to thank your country at the point of death."

This comment, however, implies certain problematic links between mental illness and violent behavior, a prevalent stereotype in China, where the mentally ill are thought to be more violent than so-called "normal" people and thereby represent a potential risk to public safety. From time to time, when news about mental patients harming others comes out, comments as reckless as one by user @静悟得慧, "why let them out [of asylums or homes] to injure people?" go viral online.

Although a link between violence and mental illness has not been proven, these public perceptions, along with unprofessional and even problematic media coverage of cases of violent behavior involving people suffering from mental illness, have given rise to and perpetuated the stigma towards, as well as the discrimination against, the mentally ill in Chinese society.

Research has shown that although Chinese domestic media do not overtly discriminate against the mentally ill, most of their coverage of stories involving mental illness tends to be negative. For instance, mental patients have mostly appeared in the media as victims or perpetrators of crimes, and unlike physically ill patients, what they receive from the media is deliberate avoidance, indifference, or worse, ridicule.

Fan Baoli, the former chief of a hospital in Tianjin, China, argued that while some mental patients can be cured, many find it tough to interact socially after long stays in hospitals. He also noted that, "society has exhibited discrimination against them, making their reintegration harder."

This rejection affects not only patients but also their caretakers. "People worry that my mental status is also disordered because I am dealing with mental patients every day," said Wang Di, a psychiatrist at Beijing's An'ding Hospital, in an interview with the Beijing News, "A couple of years ago, I was supposed to go on a blind date, but when the guy was told that I was a psychiatrist, he refused to meet me."