Yes this sort of behavior is common. One of my dad's friends was doing his PhD as an immigrant in the 90s in the US and his professor did something similar to him. Had the police called and accused him of interfering with other people's experiments due to some small dispute that had nothing do with the lab. This is common fare behavior in the US research establishment against immigrants. Another friend ended up getting electroconvulsive therapy mostly as a result of dealing with a bad advisor, ending up in the hospital like this guy, and having the shrinks diagnose him with depression, etc. He had no family, they gave him ECD despite the fact that he did not want ECD on the recommendation of the shrinks, his personality changed significantly after that.