China’s Mental Health and Social Crises

According to the official estimate from the Chinese Ministry of Health, China has over 100 million people with mental illness, of which 16 million have severe forms of mental illness. Among them, only 20 percent have received some type of treatment and the rest are left untreated and poorly cared for.

Some cities like Qingdao, Shandong Province, are reporting a tenfold increase in mental illness in the last 10 years and do not have enough mental health services, facilities, and mental health professionals.

In China, 287,000 people commit suicide annually. The makeup of successful suicides differs from the rest of world, in that there are 25 percent more women (usually more men commit suicide) and 75 percent are in the countryside (where usually suicide is more heavily represented in urban areas).

Only one-third of those who have committed suicide have known mental illness. But impulsive attempts using pesticides in remote rural areas with limited emergency care often result in unintended death. However, the newest data suggests that the men in the urban areas are catching up, while the women who die in suicide attempts in the countryside have dropped 30 percent.

More Causes for Suicide

According to the survey published by the China Center of Disease Control, most stressors that precipitated most of the suicide attempts in China lie in family conflicts, and marital and love relationship problems. Recent reports have led to some new causes: people who lost their homes and land to the new construction of state building projects, workers who have been under constant pressure and scrutiny and working long hours, and state officials whose crime of corruption is being investigated.

On the morning of Nov. 13, 2009, a 47-year-old woman named Fuzhen Tang in Jinghua Village, Chengdu City, set herself on fire on the roof of her house when it was ordered to be demolished. She subsequently died after being taken to the hospital.

Over the last few months in the workplace in Shenzhen of Foxconn, the manufacturer for parts of Apple products and computers, 12 workers jumped from the roof of a tall building and one tried to cut his wrist in a suicide attempt; 11 of these died. Former workers at Foxconn have complained of the extreme stress of the workload and the semi-military lifestyle inside the facility.

On June 26 Liu Yajun, the 50-year-old director and secretary of the Chinese Communist Party of the Central South Bureau of the Civil Aviation Administration of China killed himself allegedly during an investigation of his corruption. In recent months seven of his senior associates have been detained for investigation.

Although the above causes may account for a relatively small number of the suicide cases, these suicides generate a lot more public attention, and may be imitated by people in similar situations. Such cases also present new challenges to suicide prevention and intervention because factors beyond the realm of mental health are involved.