A story by Jaime FlorCruz over at CNN today caught my eye about mental health problems in China. The journalist asks a simple question, “Are mental health problems in China getting worse?”
Like most simple questions asking about an entire nation’s health or mental health, the answer is more complicated. Luckily, FlorCruz acknowledges as much and provides for an interesting and balanced look at the issue.
Is Chinese mental health growing worse? Let’s find out.
The article doesn’t start off well, highlighting the link between a spate of violent attacks in China by allegedly mentally ill people. The attacks, in separate incidents in geographically distant areas, have resulted in the deaths and injuries of dozens of people.
Media reports often just note an attacker was said to be “suffering from mental illness,” with little detail or background information. Many Chinese watching such reports may be left with the impression that mental illness in China is getting worse, with many such people turning to violence.
But after beginning with this gruesome premise, the reporter starts getting some expert opinion and data to see if there’s anything to the connection. Dr. Michael Phillips, director of Suicide Research and Prevention Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, said:
“I expect the recent spate of violence by persons with mental illness is more a reflection of increased press interest than the result of greater frequency of such events,” he tells me. “Given the size of the country, these events are going to happen.” […]
[He goes on to say,] “there is no clear evidence that the prevalence of mental disorders has changed dramatically in the last decade or so” — with the exception of alcohol abuse.
“It’s impossible to characterize the mental health of a nation, particularly on the size and diversity of China. My large study with 60,000+ subjects in four provinces found rates of mental illnesses similar to that reported in Europe and North America,” he said.
Apparently, there aren’t many mental health professionals in China, much less enough to help the 19 million psychiatric patients in the country. According to the article, there are only just over 88,000 mental health professionals in the entire country. For comparison sake, there are over 170,000 psychologists, 113,000 mental health counselors, 86,000 substance abuse counselors, 34,000 psychiatrists and 27,000 marriage and family therapists in the U.S. for a population of approximately 15 – 18 million who have a mental health concern.
So China has roughly 1/5th the number of professionals as the U.S. does to treat similar numbers of people. But it’s much worse than that… Because mental illness remains highly stigmatized and there remains a lot of ignorance and prejudice about it in China, though, the numbers of people who don’t seek diagnosis or treatment are probably much larger.
If we say, conservatively, 5 percent of a country’s population has a mental disorder or substance abuse problem (which is what it is in many industrialized nations), that would suggest 66.5 million Chinese have mental health concerns — 3 times the official number quoted in the CNN article.
Despite the occasional doom and gloom mentioned by some in the article, it looks like the Chinese government is taking the issue seriously:
Others credit the government for putting new priority on mental health. Along with diabetes and hypertension, Dr. Phillips notes, mental illness is now one of the main targets of a health reform program initiated in 2009. […]
The government has allocated money, but it has yet to build a network of community-based mental health providers. “Given that currently only about 8% of persons with mental illnesses ever seek help, one main goal of prevention efforts is to increase care-seeking; that is, changing attitudes about mental illnesses, so sufferers and their family members are willing to seek help.”
I’m glad to see this kind of journalism done by CNN. A lot of times, we tend to focus on the negative in the media by professionals and journals who should be at least a little bit ashamed of what they’re publishing. While not perfect, it’s nice to find a largely positive piece that helps the average reader understand what’s going on in China and put it into some perspective.
Read the full article: Growing pains hit mental health in China
20 comments
I have been reading up much more on the overall psychological issues within Asian cultures, specifically China. All findings are matching up in one thing solely: their lack of mental health self-recognition, and further their lack of psychological help within these countries. I would add these references regarding these issues to my own research centered around China’s sexual devolution and degradation.
I think it’s ironic that China is one of the most highly populated countries in the world but there are not many mental health professionals to balance it out. I think that it is important for mental health to have more awareness, especially in China. It is sad that mental illnesses are left untreated and people wonder why mental illness is such a big issue.
From reading the article can it be inferred that the reason for the mental health getting worse is because there is not encough psychologist or psychiatrist in China to help the people. But my question is how are the people that are already there being helped and is the help making a big enough impact to see change in the people that are getting help.
From reading this article, the mental health issues are going to get worse in Chia due to the fact that they are lacking and will continue to not have enough professionals to support the growing population of China. Until China improve in the area of encouraging people to become psychiatric professions, the problem will never improve.
Reading this article really implies how worse china is getting with the mental disorders. They don’t have much professional help so its pretty hard for them to receive the proper treatment china without the help. China is undergoing a massive increase of mental disorder patients, and its sad because the people in china need help, and there’s no one to give them the proper care and treatment. Until this situation is taken care of the people of china will continue to suffer, and bring harm to there families and friends.
China has a high number of unreported mental disordered patients due to the stigmatizing of disorders such as suicide. However, an alarming find in the article is the lack of mental health care providers in China. Compared to the United States, China has a significant less amount of mental health providers; a fifth less to be exact. In a country with a population of 19 million psychiatric patients, I find it disheartening that there is such a vast lack of help. A positive point in the article is that the government is taking steps to undertake the issue regarding suicide in China. The media also plays a role in the interest of mental disorders in china. It is reported that the media is too vague with its reporting and only they tend to only report the information when it is interested in the topic. Answering the question of “Is Mental Health Getting Worse in China?†would require more in-depth research into China’s mental health crises in order to answer the question effectively.
Like many other Asian countries mental health is stigmatized in China, leaving little help for sufferers. If there are truly only 88 thousand mental health professionals treating a population of over a billion, it is clear millions of Chinese go untreated and suffer symptoms. The Chinese government has an obligation to provide an opportunity for treatment to all citizens. It seems, however the Chinese government itself is inherently prejudiced toward mental health sufferers. The Chinese government has much control over the thoughts of it’s citizens, therefore the Chinese government can change negative stigmas, however it must begin at the highest level down.
It is troubling so many mentally ill in China go untreated. China greatly lacks the number of mental health professionals needed to treat its population adequately. The Chinese government should promote mental health treatment and disavow negative stigmas. The most important factor in getting the Chinese population to use mental health services is changing the very outlook of mental health treatment.
Like many other Asian countries mental health is stigmatized in China, leaving little aid for sufferers. Since there are only 88 thousand mental health professionals treating a population of over a billion, millions of Chinese go untreated and suffer symptoms. The Chinese government has an obligation to provide an opportunity for treatment to all citizens. It seems, however the government itself is prejudiced toward mental health sufferers. The Chinese government has much control over it’s citizens, therefore the government could help change negative stigmas, however it must be at the highest level down.
Like many other Asian countries mental health is stigmatized in China, leaving little aid for sufferers. With only 88 thousand mental health professionals, millions of Chinese are untreated for their mental issues. The Chinese government has much control the thought’s of it’s citizens, therefore the Chinese government can change negative stigmas, however it must be embraced at the highest level of the Chinese government
Like many other Asian countries mental health is stigmatized in China, leaving little aid for sufferers. With only 88 thousand mental health professionals, millions of Chinese are untreated for their mental issues. The Chinese government has much control the thought’s of it’s citizens, therefore the Chinese government can change negative stigmas, however it must be embraced at the highest level of the Chinese government.
I’ve done a lot of reading on mental health in China. For the most part, all I’ve seen is that they do not have good health programs. It really surprised me that there is a stigma about mental health issues in China. I guess the lack of mental health programs does go along with that stigma.
After reading this article, I have now read multiple articles about how China does not have an adequate number of mental health care professionals in the country. With China being one of the most populated countries in the world, not having enough of these professionals is an extremely important issue. I am glad to see that they are being to work towards solving this problem, even if the process is slow.
In some Asian countries, parents do not want their children to be known for having a mental illness. If this is the case in China, could this be why they are holding back from seeking help? Could the low numbers of people seeking help also be the reason why there are not many Mental Health Professionals in China? If they think that there are not many people needing help, then this might be why there are not many professionals.
It’s is astounding just how bad the disparity between the number of Mental Health professionals there are and the number of patients there are in China. I would like to see CNN go deeper into how a such a devolved country is lagging so far behind in Mental Health care than other countries with less man power.
I loved that it ended in a positive note stating that the Chinese government is taking the issue seriously and it was one of the main targets in 2009. They do not have enough professionals, but they are working on it.
China’s mental illness rate has been growing rapidly for years. People associate the mental illness rate growing with the rapid change in China. If mental illness rates have been growing for years, why hasn’t China worked to get more psychiatrists to tend to patients? According to the article, China has roughly 19 million mentally ill patients with about 88,000 psychological professionals to help them. That is nowhere near enough to help the people of China.
It is astounding to me that China only has 1/5 of the professionals that the United States does. If we have a similar amount of psychiatric patients, we need to have a similar amount of professionals to treat them. It is self-defeating for China to not have the amount of people they need to treat their citizens’ illnesses effectively. Everyone with a mental illness deserves to receive treatment and receive it well. This includes even the ones in the Chinese culture. They seriously need to keep up with their growing population and provide more help.
This article was so helpful and has led me to a greater understanding of the issues that young adults face in China. I am a college student studying undergrad and I found this article very helpful in what I was looking for.
Reading this article as an American makes me understand the importance of Mental Health global. With COVID 19 currently today, the population of China is more stressed and worried. Leaders should make the citizens mental health a priority.
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