Mental health needs are an emergency

In 2009, the World Health Organization said mental illness - which affected 7 percent of the population - had overtaken heart disease and cancer as the biggest burden on China's healthcare system. The spectrum of mental illness is broad ranging from minor conditions such as anxiety to serious illnesses like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other problems that may lead to drug addiction and serious crimes.

Depression is China's second most commonly diagnosed disease and has a huge economic cost in terms of lost workdays and medical expenses. In recent years, depression has replaced schizophrenia as the most common mental disease at China's top mental health facility, Beijing's Anding Hospital. According to rough estimates, more than 260 million people were struggling with at least mild depression in 2011. Depression-related deaths such as suicides even exceed traffic fatalities.

In 2007, China's Medical Association estimated that two-thirds of the people suffering from depression had harbored suicidal thoughts at least once, and 15-25 percent actually committed suicide.

Huge needs in the treatment of the mentally ill have led to an increase of unregistered and inadequately trained psychologists who are unable to provide proper diagnosis and treatment to the patients. As a result, the condition of quite a few patients worsens.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is expanding the country's professional ranks by modifying criteria to certify mental health counselors, who can treat patients suffering from minor depression symptoms and thus alleviate the work of psychologists/psychiatrists who could attend to more serious cases. But additional steps have to be taken to ensure that enough professionals are trained in medicine and psychology to address all the problems.

Perhaps recruiting professionals and experts from abroad to help train local psychology students could help. But the government has no choice but to build more mental health facilities to help patients in greater need. Mental health needs are an emergency and they should be treated as such.

The author is a global health consultant and contributing editor for The Globalist.

(China Daily 08/27/2014 page9)