The Madness of China's Mental Health System BY WAN YANHAI
Tom Jigme Wheat
PRINT | TEXT SIZE | EMAIL | SINGLE PAGE The Madness of
China's Mental Health System
One of the country's leading activists and health advocates explains
the tragic irony of mental health in China today: Many who need
treatment won't get it, while many who don't are forced into treatment
to silence political dissent.
BY WAN YANHAI | JANUARY 26, 2011
According to a 2009 article in the British medical journal The Lancet,
as many as 17.5 percent of China's adult population may suffer from
some kind of mental illness. Yet mental health remains a vexing, and
in some cases taboo, topic in China. The trauma and reversals of
recent decades, from the Cultural Revolution to the current all-
consuming drive for wealth, from shifting family structures to the
migration of millions of people each year from villages to cities to
find work, all have put invisible strains on the people living through
these vast changes. Some recent headlines from the past year indicate
that untreated mental illness may be becoming a more acute problem in
China: a series of grisly attacks by middle-age men on school
children, some of them deadly, caused a great public panic. The
suicides of several young workers at a factory in southern China
assembling iPhones likewise raised questions about where migrants
(most workers are living far from home) can turn to for emotional
support in difficult times.
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Meanwhile, even as many people who need medical attention are unable
to receive help -- either because it is too costly or because of the
great social stigma attached -- there are others who are healthy but
are labeled "mentally ill" by authorities seeking a reason to detain
them in mental-health hospitals, as the New York Times recently
documented. One man mentioned in the article, for instance, is 54-year-
old Xu Lindong, who was forced to spend six and a half years in mental
hospitals and subjected to 54 electric-shock treatments following a
land dispute. (A recent New Yorker article explored the interest --
and confusion -- among some in China regarding the ideas of Sigmund
Freud.) This is the tragic irony of mental health in China today: Many
whose lives could be improved will never receive medical attention,
and many who don't need it are held in confinement in the name of
medicine.
In this context, I would like to offer my own personal story. I was
trained in medicine in the 1980s and subsequently worked for a
government health institute and then for a private NGO dedicated to
AIDS awareness, which brought me into contact with marginalized
populations and stigmatized people in China, including those wrongly
labeled as mentally ill. I have seen people sent to mental hospitals
for being gay, for domestic disputes, and for political dissent.
I was born in 1963 and grew up in a small town in Anhui province. The
first person I remember being described as mentally ill was my father.
He was a police officer in the 1950s; he found his work very hard to
do, and by the time he left his job in the late 1950s, he hated
politics. During the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and
lasted for 10 years, he spent time in a labor camp. There were two
words people used during my childhood to describe people with a mental
illness: One was fengzi, which means a dangerous person without
restraint or a conscience. The other was naozi shou ciji, which means
someone with a mind broken by pain or stress. That was what they said
of my father. He was not ever formally diagnosed because there was
very little understanding of mental health at that time in China;
under Mao Zedong, it was seen as a sign of weakness. I think my
father's problem was not mental illness, but instead that he had an
independent mind. He read a lot and thought differently about the
world. In the 1970s, people often used the label of mental illness for
people like that.
In secondary school, I had to decide between focusing on science or on
politics and literature. My father said to me, "If you study politics
and literature, you will have to lie. But if you study science, it has
nothing to do with politics." He also made the argument: "Even if you
are put in prison, the police will be kinder to you if you are a
doctor." After the Cultural Revolution, many families encouraged their
children to study science, engineering, and medicine. That is how I
came to attend Shanghai First Medical College, which I entered in
1981.
During that time, interest in Western notions of mental illness grew
quickly. The 1980s were a period of relative openness in China, when
foreign ideas on everything from art to politics to medicine to
environmentalism began to flood into China. During the Cultural
Revolution, psychology was considered a "pseudo-science." But after
1986, I remember a lot of lectures at university on psychology and
psychoanalysis. In 1987, I helped to translate two chapters from an
English-language book about psychological counseling and crisis
intervention. I graduated in 1988 and moved to Beijing, where I got a
job as a health researcher for the National Health Education
Institute, which is part of the Ministry of Health. I remember in 1989
when the ministry established the first suicide-prevention hotline in
Beijing. By no means did Chinese health professionals understand or
accept mental health issues the way Westerners did in those years.
Still, the trend was clearly toward a more progressive understanding,
focused on improving the lives of patients.
In 1995, I founded one of China's first NGOs, the Aizhixing Institute
of Health Education, with a mission of increasing awareness,
treatment, and prevention efforts for HIV/AIDS in China. My work
brought me into contact with some of the sub-populations most affected
by the disease, including gays and lesbians, drug users, and sex
workers. All suffer great social stigma in China. Until 2000, being
gay was technically classified as a mental illness in China, but gay
people still suffer extraordinary discrimination. I remember in 1997,
when a 30-something lesbian woman attended a meeting held by Aizhixing
on lesbian rights. She was quick and energetic. She told me her family
had sent her to a mental hospital for six months because she was not
married and they thought something must be wrong. She asked me, "Was
this the right approach?" Of course I told her it was not. We talked
about the confusion on the hushed topic of sexuality and mental
illness.
In the past 10 years, I believe that an increasing number of healthy
people have been hospitalized as "mentally ill." This is troubling to
me. The trend began with the government crackdown on the dissident
religious group Falun Gong, which was banned in 1999. The authorities
labeled members of the group as mentally ill -- and therefore an
alleged threat to social stability -- and used that as pretense to
confine them. When the government saw that approach could be useful,
it expanded the strategy to target a broad swath of political
dissidents and petitioners.
Because of my own work on the controversial topic of AIDS, I have been
detained three times, and in May 2010 I left China because of
increasing political pressure. I have crossed paths with many
activists and NGO leaders in similar positions; we all want to improve
the lives of people in China, but the government finds our work
threatening. We did not form organizations to be against the Chinese
government, but we are sometimes considered by the officials to be
dissidents or troublemakers. One example is Zhou Yi Juan, a Buddhist
nun who in 2005 organized a memorial in Tiananmen Square to the
victims of the June 4, 1989, massacre. Afterward, she was forced to
enter a mental hospital for psychiatric treatment. In 2007, Aizhixing
supported her with a fellowship to write a memoir about this
experience; two years later, she took legal action and sued the
hospital. I believe that these cases should be known more widely.
Today in Beijing three government branches operate mental hospitals:
the health department, the police department, and the civil affairs
department. This is troubling evidence that mental health is not seen
as a medical issue, as it should be, but as a matter of social
stability and a concern of law enforcement. This attitude leads to
abuses, and there is no appeal process for people like Zhou Yi Juan.
In Zhejiang province, an official document dated March 23, 2010, and
published online details the collaboration between the local police
and health departments on mental health, which is wrongly described as
first and foremost a social stability issue. In a troubling return to
the climate of suspicion my parents experienced during the Cultural
Revolution, neighbors in Zhejiang are encouraged to report on each
other if they suspect mental illness.
These examples represent only a small glimpse of the vast confusion
over mental health in China. These are tragedies the world should know
about. The impulse to hide the problems is the worst approach.
thomaswheat1975
Anti-DabianchenVirus
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.china/msg/fb909fdc12869521?hl=en
Let's hear the evidence to support this accusation of yours. Will you
end up claiming that you heard voices telling you this? Into which ear
of yours did those voices whisper? Left, or right? Middle, perhaps?
On Feb 14, 4:09 pm, Tom Jigme Wheat <thomaswheat1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/26/the_madness_of_china...
Tom Jigme Wheat
wrote:
> So, you claim that DP is a "CCP sychophant".
>
>
> Let's hear the evidence to support this accusation of yours. Will you
> end up claiming that you heard voices telling you this? Into which ear
> of yours did those voices whisper? Left, or right? Middle, perhaps?
Why dont you talk about this article. also i see how you treat
Chuande. Your nothing more than a sinocentric bigot
go fuck yourself with your 1 inch dick. Oh I forgot you cant, its too
small.
> > thomaswheat1975- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Anti-DabianchenVirus
> On Feb 14, 6:26 pm, Anti-DabianchenVirus <wuso...@rocketmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > So, you claim that DP is a "CCP sychophant".
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.china/msg/fb909fdc128695...
>
> > Let's hear the evidence to support this accusation of yours. Will you
> > end up claiming that you heard voices telling you this? Into which ear
> > of yours did those voices whisper? Left, or right? Middle, perhaps?
>
> Why dont you talk about this article. also i see how you treat
> Chuande. Your nothing more than a sinocentric bigot
> go fuck yourself with your 1 inch dick. Oh I forgot you cant, its too
> small.
>
*That* is your proof that he is a "CCP sychophant"?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/msg/1f1cc0d5a00015dd?hl=en
Into which ear did you say the "voices" whispered this to you?
Just because you yourself only have a one-inch dick, you think that
other people do as well huh? Bwahahahahaha!
Anti-DabianchenVirus
> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
RichAsianKid
Question: f mental illness >>> 50% do you think that would become a new
norm and normal? In a blind man's world, even an one-eyed man is king.
Isn't life merely another variant of some terminal STD?
Just asking....;)
rst0wxyz
These people, Tom Jigme Wheat, DP, ChuandeTu, abianchen, and Peter the
Tibetan Clown, are all members of More Rock Loco Mental Hospital.
Just ignore them.
Anti-DabianchenVirus
> On Feb 15, 3:46 am, RichAsianKid <richasian...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2/15/2011 6:09 AM, Tom Jigme Wheat wrote:
> > Question: f mental illness >>> 50% do you think that would become a new
> > norm and normal? In a blind man's world, even an one-eyed man is king.
> > Isn't life merely another variant of some terminal STD?
>
> > Just asking....;)
>
> These people, Tom Jigme Wheat, DP, ChuandeTu, abianchen, and Peter the
> Just ignore them.
Hey, you forgot to include "tfkmjk6262", the 10-cent Tibetan beggar in
New Zealand.
rst9
wrote:
Correct, these people, Tom Jigme Wheat, DP, ChuandeTu, tfkmjk6262
abianchen, and Peter the Tibetan Clown, are all members of More Rock
Anti-DabianchenVirus
You left out "Free Tibet"!
rst9
wrote:
Correct, these people, Tom Jigme Wheat, DP, ChuandeTu, tfkmjk6262,
"Free Tibet, the ole' AP camera man", abianchen, and Peter the Tibetan
Tom Jigme Wheat
more proof of your racisim against tibetans. your nothing more than a
troll.
Tom Jigme Wheat
more evidence of your CCP sycophantic behavior. Your solution to
people who disagree with you is to support the CCP sending in the
tanks and massacre peaceful protestors. Yet hypocriticaly you support
the egyptian army's deposing the president, Mubarak. I think you are
confused. Follow your own path dont be a follower.
thomaswheat1975
rst9
I don't support anything. I am telling you as I see it. There is one
thing that is crystal clear to me, that the CCP will NOT lose control
in China. You have seen it on 6/4/1989, and you'll it again. The
CCP's attitude is "to damn with the rest of the world".
Anti-DabianchenVirus
Your ignorance is deafening! You think that "tfkmjk6262" represents
the whole of the Tibetan people? Bwahahahaha! Look up his profile and
read his posts.
Anti-DabianchenVirus
Can't answer these, huh?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/msg/0b81a79d5426ca03?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/msg/b0d99715aa149b12?hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/msg/58f0d0a191d8f05a?hl=en&dmode=source