Even in Shanghai, considered by many to be China's most sophisticated city, there is still a reluctance to discuss one's mental health because of a fear you might be perceived as mentally ill.
That's what officials with the United Nations' World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health have discovered as they conduct a mental-health study of urban residents 18 to 70 years old.
So far, 3 percent of the people randomly selected for the survey have refused to participate, said organizers, who are seeking 2,500 local respondents while they are still in Beijing for the two-city study.
"Some insisted they don't have any mental illness," said Huang Shiping, a Ministry of Health official supervising the survey in Shanghai. "Others declined to participate, saying their mental health is a private matter."
Jin Youlai, spokeswoman for the Shanghai Mental Health Institute, which is helping with the study, added: "Actually, we aren't targeting people with mental illnesses. We simply want to gather first-hand information on people's incidents of mental illness, what might have caused the psychological problem, what kind of health care they're getting, how they rate the quality of their treatment and what burden, if any, they see mental ills place on the immediate family and on society as a whole."
Respondents are also asked how well they sleep and how they cope with unhappiness in day-to-day life.
Huang added that after researchers explained the purpose of the survey and promised that background information on respondents would remain confidential, people selected from the city's permanent-residence records became more receptive to participating.
The field work in Shanghai, which began on December 23, is scheduled to be completed on January 31.
The work in Beijing, which started in late November, should be wrapping up in the next few days.
The results from the study will be provided to government officials to help shape mental-health policies and services.
As the Chinese mainland's economy develops, urban residents are encountering many frustrations, said Zhang Minyuan of the Shanghai Mental Health Institute.
An estimated 5 percent of the residents of Shanghai's urban core suffer from mental illnesses or other types of psychological disorders, according to Zhang.
(eastday.comJanuary 16, 2002)
