Understanding of mental health issues in China

[pinkskybluesky]

Another little something I would like to hear opinions about, if you have any.

 

Generally, how well are mental health issues such as depression understood in China?

Has anyone noticed any differences surrounding ideas about mental health compared to western ideas?

[roddy]

Think of it being the 1950s or 1940s. Very little understanding, a lot of prejudice.

 

Has anyone had any first-hand experience of this? Anyone who clearly needed help but was never going to get it? 

 

The nearest I've got is back in my first year of teaching. There was one kid in a class of six-year-olds who I would guess could have been diagnosed as having learning difficulties. Non-professional opinion, obviously, but...

 

He got something wrong one day and the other kids in the class started telling him he was an idiot. I think I tried to tell them in my beginner Chinese that they shouldn't say that, or that he wasn't an idiot, or something. Kid looked up at me and said "No, I am an idiot. The teacher said so."

[gato]

It's probably closer to the 1980s, at least in Shanghai. Prozac and the like are widely prescribed. Medication is predominant mode of treatment, while non-medication alternatives like cognitive behavior therapy is known but not practiced much at all.

[Nathan Mao]

From what I've seen, psychologists generally aren't trusted and often are considered quacks.

From the Candle For Love website, it seems that asking a Chinese person to go to marriage counseling is akin to calling them crazy.

There also seems to be a broad skepticism that telling your problems to someone who doesn't know you is helpful at all, that only people you know and trust (family and long-term friends) can help much, but even then, notions of privacy and self-respect seem to preclude talking about problems.

[Steingletscher]

There are a couple of documentaries buried in English language Aljazeera somewhere (don't know if it can easily be accessed it America). One discussed the more political abuses of mental health, such as declaring people who disagree or rat out other people as mentally insane, and another about how the ones with mental health have fallen through the cracks of society with nothing to help them. Psychology is seen more in the form of a pill and medicine, and counseling is unheard of, with the exception of Shanghai and Beijing, but mostly only around the expat circles.

As for how they understand it, I remember talking with a French girl with a masters in psychology about it. She said that whenever a Chinese person was assigned to her, they would never use adjectives to describe how they were feeling, but simply talk about how their body feels. This is in line with what a good friend of mine told me when she had broken up with her boyfriend. We spoke in a mix of Chinese and English, but she spent the entire time describing how bad her body felt, and how she couldn't play the sports and exercise the way she used to. She barely used more abstract words of emotion. It makes me wonder how much the words and characters of conveying emotion in Chinese are connected to the physical body and if the cultural way of describing it necessary constraint of the language.

[Nathan Mao]

Also consider how Marxist countries have used psychology as another method of authoritarian control. China hasn't fully emerged from its Marxist past yet.

[ChTTay]

In teaching children, outside of their mainstream school, i have come across some parents who refuse to accept there is any issue with their child at all, some know that there is an issue but just force their child into things that the other children do, and some parents who acknowledge the issue and do what they can (doctors, not to place unrealistic expectations in terms of grades etc).

There is a good podcast on sinica that goes into disability in China.

[hedwards]

The common attitude that I saw was that it's a person's responsibility to just deal with it. When I was over there my neighborhood back home had a mass murder at a bar that my Dad sometimes visits And within a few blocks of where several of my friends live. It was basically impossible to get any of the Chinese to understand why that would upset me when my Dad wasn't even present when the attack happened.

 

Presumably, that applies for things other than anxiety, I certainly wouldn't want to have any sort of major mental health problem over there.

[zhouhaochen]

I know several psychoterapists who have been going to China for years doing annual training sessions for Chinese psychotherapists at a centre in Shanghai (I think it is called 上海精神卫生中心) and visited institutions all over the country. They said the "old" approach of basically chaning people to a wall in a little room is dying out, but still exists.

For psychotheray, it is starting in China, but there is quite a lot of discussion how much (or if at all) can be transferred of that approach to a society that different.

Most of them said though, most causes of problems in China come from to the same stuff as in Europe: parents, sex and relationships.

[akdn]

Understanding among the general public is growing, but stories in the media make it all-too-easy to associate mental health problems with violent behaviour.  

 

In general, the mental health field is becoming more professionalized, with diagnoses and treatment coming into line with Western practices (i.e. gone are the days when mental health problems were blamed on one’s political leanings). 

 

However, this early stage of professionalization has seen the rising commercialization of the anti-depressant drugs industry. So, doctors themselves may gain financially from promoting awareness, making diagnoses, and prescribing the drugs of favoured pharmaceutical companies. There is a prevalence of unlicensed practitioners, who are not following standardized codes of practice. 

 

These are issues the West has experienced (and continues to do so), too, although doctors and the public are more aware of what might constitute a conflict of interest, exploitation, or other unethical behaviour.

 

These brief insights are all courtesy of Deep China – The Moral Life of the Person: What Anthropology and Psychiatry Tell Us about China Today. Well worth a read.

[gato]

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks interesting. I've downloaded a sample.

[pinkskybluesky]

Thanks for so many interesting replies!

I'll also be taking a look at that book