Mental Health Abroad: Spotlight On China
August 8, 2008 by Alicia Sparks, Mental Health Notes
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
In light of today’s 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at mental health in China: Mental health facilities, services, treatments, statistics, etc.
I once talked with an Asian Mental Health Notes reader who shared with me the strong stigma and shame mental illness carries in Asian countries. So, I wasn’t surprised when I read Chinese Concerned About Mental Health, a 2003 article that states, “Traditionally, Chinese consider mental disease to be a shame,” and quotes one Chinese man’s fear of his colleagues finding out about his depression if he were to see a doctor.
Fear of stigma aside, in another 2003 article, The Edge of China’s Mental Health, Zack Lynch posts the following information:
China has only about 14,000 qualified psychiatrists…about the same number as France, with 60 million people—compared to China’s 1.3 billion [...] Two million Chinese try to kill themselves annually…and China’s 750 or so state-run mental-health institutions can’t keep pace with the rising demand for their services.
Similarly, Wikipedia’s entry for Mental Health in China states “China has 17,000 certified psychologists, which is ten percent of that of other developed countries per capita.”
I won’t pretend to be an expert on China’s mental health; I do well to keep up with everything going on in America! However, I have rounded up some potentially helpful websites for you to peruse.
The UK’s Mental Health Foundation provides Ways To Look After Your Mental Health, a free, downloadable “postcard” in both Chinese and English. The postcard isn’t very in depth, but it is a starting point.
The Chinese Society of Psychiatry and Beijing Huilongguan Hospital provide Chinese Psychiatry Online seems to provide a wealth of information and news about psychiatry and mental health in China, as well as information about other Chinese psychiatry- and mental health-related organizations.
The Chinese Mental Health Association (CMHA) provides “community based mental health assistance and support to the ever growing Chinese community in the United Kingdom.” This website is organized, colorful, and provides tons of resources.
The American Psychological Association (APA) dedicates space to resources that may be helpful to psychologists working in China.
As you can see, I didn’t find many resources. I don’t know if it’s my Googling skills, or that there just aren’t that many. If you know of more, please feel free to share them in the comments!
Image: SXC
I wrote a huge paper on this last year,actually. Well, it was on postpartum depression in China specifically, but of course it’s impossible to study postpartum and not study mental health. Basically, I concluded that the Chinese are starting to learn about mental health issues, but they’re just behind. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to spur things along, but they have an uphill battle because the Chinese don’t even have a word that separates “depression” from “sadness.” They don’t have any prominent people that have spoke out about their battles with mental illness (yet), like Brooke Shields did here with postpartum depression. And their doctors only recently began receiving special training in psychiatry.
I added the paper to my site when I saw this, in case anyone is interested, although I will warn you it’s huge. There is a list of sources at the bottom though that could be helpful.
http://wvuerin.blogspot.com
@ Erin – Thanks so much for sharing your paper!
If you are serious finding out the real situation in China check out “Psychitric Abuse in China” on
http://www.cipfg.org/.