Growing Pains: Mental Health Care in a Developing China

World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 2011

This paper summarizes the history of the development of Chinese mental health system; the current situation in the mental health field that China has to face in its effort to reform the system, including mental health burden, workforce and resources, as well as structural issues; the process of national mental health service reform, including how it was included into the national public health program, how it began as a training program and then became a treatment and intervention program, its unique training and capacity building model, and its outcomes and impacts; the barriers and challenges of the reform process; future suggestions for policy; and Chinese experiences as response to the international advocacy for the development of mental health.

The Lancet, 2012

Psychiatric Services, 2013

Lancet, 2009

Background In China and other middle-income countries, neuropsychiatric conditions are the most important cause of ill health in men and women, but eff orts to scale up mental health services have been hampered by the absence of high-quality, country-specifi c data for the prevalence, treatment, and associated disability of diff erent types of mental disorders. We therefore estimated these variables from a series of epidemiological studies that were done in four provinces in China.

Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, 1978

Reportedly, the People's Republic of China has made great progress in health care services, particularly at preventive, primary and community levels. Information on their psychiatric services is still scarce. A group of 12 health professionals visited the country for three weeks in July 1977. This paper provides a description and an analysis of the network of mental health services using a sample of one mental hospital, six general hospitals and a number of health units in cities, factories and communes. The basic principles of policy and administration are those of a collective socialism with strong central guidelines and considerable local administrative initiative. Admissions to the mental hospital in Shanghai reveal that 83% are young acute schizophrenic cases and very few are neurotic or non-psychotic. This distribution stands in great contrast with admissions to mental hospitals in the West, as is the case in Canada, where schizophrenics represent only 12% of all first adm...

Journal of Counseling & …, 2010

Boasting a booming economy and having showcased itself to the world as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, China is poised to become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Signs of economic progress abound in the massive urban centers. As part of this rapid economic and social change, the Chinese people are experiencing significant multiple stressors. At the World Mental Health Day held in Beijing on October 2, 2006, Zhou Dongfeng, president of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry, revealed that at least 100 million of China's 1.3 billion people have various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobias. According to one report, mental illness accounts for 20% of the total patients in hospitals, making it the most widespread disease in China (Fei, 2006). Although the worldwide average rate for suicide is 14 per 10,000, the suicide rate in China is approximately 20 to 30 per 10,000. In urban areas, where the signs of economic progress are most obvious, suicide is often committed by jumping from high-rise buildings or into rivers, whereas in rural areas, suicide is often committed by ingesting pesticides or other poisons. According to gender, the suicide rate is higher among Chinese women than among Chinese men. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Chinese individuals between the ages of 15 and 34 (Ji, Kleinman, & Becker, 2001; Liu, 2003). Xinhua news agency reported that approximately 10% of 340 million youth under the age of 17 experience mental and/or behavioral problems such as anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and criminal activity (Radio Free Asia, 2004). During Chinese Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng's address at the 13th World Mental Health Day, he expressed concern that the "problems with mental health have threatened the development of China's human resources" (Radio Free Asia, 2004, para. 2). In addition to these mental illness concerns, there are many other reasons for the Chinese to seek psychological help; among the most common are mental distress, school-related problems, finan

Open Journal of Psychiatry, 2012

The purpose of this study is to reach a better understanding of how minor psychological problems (MPP) are perceived in China by well-educated Chinese. An exploratory qualitative design is used. The results are based on interviews with professionals and students practicing Chinese medicine (TCM) and lay people from three urban sites. Minor psychological problems have traditionally not been labelled as disorders or illnesses but challenges in daily living or as "heart problems" and seemed to have less serious consequences than we are accustomed to think from a modern western outlook. "Problems of life" rather than sickness was the category that best summarized perceptions of such problems among the Chinese. It points to a salutogenetic perspective reflecting perception of mental health and MPP as processes of adaption and interpretation of meaning rather than medical conditions or sickness. Due to the influence from the West these problems are, however, more often comprehended as a health problems or even sickness, and not solely natural problems of life.

Medicine Anthropology Theory, 2020

This article examines families’ involvement in the care and management of people with serious mental illnesses in China, and focuses on how that involvement is shaped by changing psychiatric institutions and law. Drawing on 32 months of fieldwork, I show that familial involvement is primarily characterised by guan [管], which can mean ‘care’ and/or ‘control’, and which commonly invokes a particular cultural ideal of parenting. Tracing how the language and practice of guan circulate between different realms, I argue that a ‘biopolitical paternalism’ has emerged in contemporary China. It reduces patients to carriers and manifestations of biomedical/security risk and legitimises the state’s policy of population management as a form of paternalistic intervention, while displacing certain paternalistic responsibilities, such as hospitalisation and ensuring medication compliance, onto patients’ families. This biopolitical paternalism produces vulnerabilities and unease within families and aggravates health disparities between patients. The analytic of biopolitical paternalism has conceptual efficacy and practical implications beyond mental health.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the widely held assumption that underutilisation of mental health services by Chinese living in western countries is due to their different beliefs regarding mental illness. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were analysed from in-depth interviews with 23 Chinese respondents, who gave a total of 30 accounts of a Chinese person they knew who had experienced mental health problems in the Netherlands. Analysis focused on the way these problems were described and explained, as well as the kinds of help regarded as appropriate. Findings – The beliefs expressed about mental illness did not seem to differ from those current in the west in ways that would form a major barrier to seeking help from mainstream services. Research limitations/implications – The study was exploratory and the limited sample size did not make it possible to analyse sources of variation in beliefs. Generalisation to other countries would need to take into account the specific characteristics of the Chinese population in those countries. Practical implications – Simply knowing that a person is of Chinese origin is likely to tell us little about their beliefs concerning mental health. Moreover, traditional Chinese beliefs are not necessarily incompatible with western ones. Service providers should pay more attention to issues such as communication barriers, entitlement to care, knowledge of how the health system works and discrimination. Originality/value – The paper challenges widely held notions about ethnic Chinese that are seldom empirically tested. It is the first study of its kind in the Netherlands.