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Depression leading cause of mental illness in Shenzhen

Posted: 10/11/2013 7:00 am

One in five adults in Shenzhen suffers from a mental illness, Chinanews reported yesterday, which was the 22nd World Mental Health Day. Moreover, 90% of sufferers in the city have never accepted treatment for their mental health problems.

According to Shenzhen Kangning Hospital in Luohu District, which is at the centre of the city’s mental illness prevention network, 21.19% of the city’s population suffers from some form of mental illness either mild or serious, and 1.41% of the city’s population (that is over 150,000 people) suffers from a serious mental illness.

Liu Tiebang, head of the hospital, said one of the problems with combating the problem was the mobility of the population. Moreover, the city is hugely limited in its resources. The national standard requires a city’s mental hospitals to have 1.71 beds for every 10,000 people, but Shenzhen has only 0.43, less than one quarter of what’s required.

One of the most common forms of mental illness in the city is depression, and homesickness has been cited as a major cause. Last time a citywide survey was carried out in 2005, it was found that 8.78% of women and 6.75% of men in the city suffer from mental illness. As with most of the world, the prevalence is higher among unmarried people than married people. It is also higher among unmarried people than married people and those with more than 13 years of formal education.

Depression is curable. Here is a list of possible ways to combat it from Britain’s NHS website.

In spite of all this, it is not just Shenzhen that is facing problems in its approach to mental health treatment. South China Morning Post reported yesterday that Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, required its subdistricts to report at least two cases of grave mental illness for every 1,000 residents.

The paper has more:

The law requires all full-service hospitals to set up psychiatric departments in an effort to make up for previous disregard for mental health services. The law also ended involuntary treatment of mentally ill patients.

The order to identify and register those with severe mental illness follows a national directive from the Ministry of Health from July last year, which stipulates the number of cases each province, city and county-level administration had to report or face administrative penalties.

Is Shenzhen being burdened by this quota system or is it simply moving faster? Either way, the stigma attached to those who are certified as mentally ill in China is hard for a Westerner to imagine.

Haohao

A first: man who killed father in Zhuhai given psychiatric treatment rather than jail time

Posted: 02/18/2013 9:30 am

A man in Zhuhai who killed his father in a fit of rage on November 18 last year will be given psychiatric treament instead of being thrown in jail after new mental health laws were passed last October, Sina News reports.

Mr. Xing, 37, a blue collar worker in Zhuhai’s Doumen District, beat his father to death with a metal pipe at around 6 a.m. after the father had made some casual remarks that angered Xing. He later died in hospital. Although the beating was severe enough to leave the father’s head disfigured, Doumen Public Security Bureau did not succeed in their initial attempts to have him convicted of murder.

In January this year, Foshan No. 3 People’s Hospital diagnosed Xing with schizophrenia. Under the new laws, which were approved by The Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress after World Mental Health Day in October, Xing will receive a lighter sentence as well as psychiatric treatment.

China only has about 20,000 registered psychiatrists, or 15 psychiatrists for every one million sufferers. The number of mental health institutions and doctors lags far behind the need, according to Xinhua.

Haohao
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