China has 100 million people with mental illness

China has 100 million people with mental illness

www.telegraph.co.uk

Mental illness has now overtaken heart disease and cancer as the biggest burden on the Chinese health system, according to the World Health Organisation, affecting seven per cent of the population.

The definition of mental illness is broad, and a large proportion of Chinese suffer from relatively minor conditions such as anxiety, depression, drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, Dr Huang estimated that only five per cent of sufferers are aware of their condition and try to seek treatment.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Is it just me, or is the definition of "mental illness" becoming broader and broader in recent times? Now, something as common as being stressed out appears to be grounds to diagnose someone with some "official" mental tag.

My guess is that if these same parameters were used in modern day America, they would end up labeling over half of us as completely insane. lol

I almost wonder if these parameters aren't being DELIBERATELY created by those who stand to gain in one form or another from such diagnosises? For instance, the pharma industry?

www.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

BS.

Simple BS.

Personalities will never adhere to a static definition.

The second humanity ceases partisanship of any kind is when we can let go of such divisive rhetoric....

Sorry, DD, but this is BS.

I get the impression that Western medicine is sowing the seeds of health-related anxiety in order to squeeze some profit out of the region.

But perhaps I'm too cynical. If we accept the statistics which arise from accepting the premise, then 'normality' is becoming more and more - the minority.

I grown accustomed to expect most such announcement to be little more than more Social-Engineering at work.

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
Is it just me, or is the definition of "mental illness" becoming broader and broader in recent times? Now, something as common as being stressed out appears to be grounds to diagnose someone with some "official" mental tag.

My guess is that if these same parameters were used in modern day America, they would end up labeling over half of us as completely insane. lol

Yes, yes, yes, right wing nut, left wing loon.

I almost wonder if these parameters aren't being DELIBERATELY created by those who stand to gain in one form or another from such diagnosises? For instance, the pharma industry?

That's a good guess, DD.

It's not just china, in general the world is becoming more and more complex and sometimes the brain just can't juggle all the new challenges that come.

add:
People should not easily rely on medications to deal with stress and sleeping problems. It becomes habitual and the person would not be capable to handle new situations in the long term, and would have to rely on medications more and more.

[edit on Tue, 28 Apr 09 by Jazzyguy]

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
My guess is that if these same parameters were used in modern day America, they would end up labeling over half of us as completely insane.

Diagnoses are indeed broad in modern day America. Where have you been? In fact, I didn't read anything in the linked article that suggests theirs are broader than American standard. If every American were to submit to a clinical evaluation, chances are the majority would leave with a diagnosis of something.

Doctors pass around antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications like they're candy. Feeling blue? Here's some Prozac. Feeling anxious? How about some Xanax? The answer to any unhappy feeling is either medication or a referral to a psychiatrist. It couldn't be that you're just a normal human experiencing normal emotions, or that an external event has caused a very appropriate emotional reaction on your part.

I almost wonder if these parameters aren't being DELIBERATELY created by those who stand to gain in one form or another from such diagnosises? For instance, the pharma industry?

I think you're right on the money.


[edit on 28/4/09 by paperplanes]

Funny enough was reading through this site (www.nimh.nih.gov...) and found some seriously disturbing material. Not sure but i was under the impression that 3/4 of the world is suffering from some form of mental illness. Given how well we all get along with each other.
I guess we can now wage wars based on the mental status of a nations citizens.

Apparently, so does California.

And they send like-kind to Washington.

Feel bad for China.

Worse for us.

Originally posted by tristar
Funny enough was reading through this site (www.nimh.nih.gov...) and found some seriously disturbing material. Not sure but i was under the impression that 3/4 of the world is suffering from some form of mental illness. Given how well we all get along with each other.
I guess we can now wage wars based on the mental status of a nations citizens.

I think though, that we really need to understand the criteria being used to judge a person's physiological response to their environment as a 'mental' illness.

I have found that it seems a more reasonable approach to state that the human condition has begun to decay; and we have superimposed an artificial reality around us that simply does not jibe with 'nurturing' our species along the path of survival.

In the name of imaginary lines on the planet we brutalize ourselves and erase each others strides to survive. We contrive notional differences amongst each other.

We have used our own ecosystem as a waste repository. We accept, almost at an instinctual level, that we must identify and seek out aberrations in our society, if only to oppress them. We accept increasingly destructive pressures on our persons, from chemicals to contrived regimens and lifestyles. Our social psyche is broken.

If we could fix the dysfunction at the level of those who think, quite incorrectly, that they can 'control,' 'contrive', and 'confabulate' the world 'we are all to live in'; we might witness a large-scale reduction in the nature of the man-made stresses that cause the problem in the first place.

just saying...

reply to post by paperplanes


There is a lot of truth to that statement but there also is an underground
backlash by physicians, at least where I live which may or may not be due to decreased mental health budgets. Out of curiosity some years back when I was in psych school I decided to test the "like candy" hypothesis and went to a couple of doctors and a clinician with the express purpose of seeing if I could be put on a prescription. Without fail all of them refused, and all of them were treating coworkers who were basically addicted to these pills. It seems to be a self-generating cycle.

If it gets to 51% of the population being mentally ill, wouldnt that make the other 49% the minority and maybe start giving them pills to become "normal" like the majority? I think we are evolving spiritually and they just want to drug us to prevent that from happening. A form of mass population control.

[edit on 28-4-2009 by Grossac]

Out of curiosity, obviously we are a product of our environment and our behavioral instincts are altered from birth, so if we were to be more constructive as a society, would that mean we need to turn back the clock several thousand of years or turn it forward several thousand years. Obviously our past has been plagued with far worse brutal means at destroying each other, so i am at a loss on how the human race could even evolve any further without as history has shown us, total destruction on a global scale. (World Wars).
I tend to look at nature as the rule book, just like a forest fire burns its way through everything, as a result there is a new regeneration of life, i cant help but think that is this a natural part of human thinking and evolution.
Is mental illness really an illness or is it natures way of altering itself. We barely understand how nature its self works, well we have a fair idea but were still very far from comprehending its natural behavior. So why would the human being be excluded from natures rule book.
Keep in mind i am no expert on the matter, but i tend to look at things from a birds eye view. All life created returns to its origin of creation.

[edit on 28-4-2009 by tristar]

reply to post by tristar


That really is a bird's eye view.

We often tend to narrow our scope to make it easier to envision our future, and that's not always constructive, that's for sure. But I suspect, looking at the long haul exclusively would be equally stressful. The happy medium is what some might refer to as 'path'. It is a quandary, but at the end of the day, one each of us must acknowledge it, if we are to make the passing more effective, and as painless as possible.

Sadly, we are overshadowed by a hermetic construct that hold far too much control over our lives, and having achieved that position, have created a dysfunctional model, an unbalanced equation. Because we can only strive to seek a Utopian existence - and will never see true equality among men under these circumstances, we cannot blame them completely (except for their hubris). The only real problem with this is they seem wont to 'correct' the imbalance as long as they profit, one way or another, even if it is only toward the aggrandizement of their own egos.

[/verbosity off]

Well 100 million people is "only" 7% of China's population.

the USA stands at 26% ? so they are by far more mentally stable from what we know. Well then again not everyone can be medically diagnosed (poor etc).

An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year

NIMH source

Doctors pass around antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications like they're candy. Feeling blue? Here's some Prozac. Feeling anxious? How about some Xanax? The answer to any unhappy feeling is either medication or a referral to a psychiatrist. It couldn't be that you're just a normal human experiencing normal emotions, or that an external event has caused a very appropriate emotional reaction on your part.

reply to post by paperplanes


I've seen this documentary and it will amaze you on how psychiatry is a pseudo science. Every year, a bunch of pompas psychiatrist meet up and start creating more disease in their big book. In other words, every year you get more "mental disorders" added as an official mental disorder. It's a bunch of dung if you ask me. I strongly recomend watching the doc

Interesting, so were at a loose loose situation on an evolution scale. Obviously we cannot get along with anything that has some form of diversity which is not accepted by "our" understanding of acceptance. So, that almost always leads us to over power what is not accepted or diverse based on our assumption of how things should be.
I guess our down fall will be our arrogance as it usually is when confronted with an irrelevant issues. Although when allowed to review his or her choice, he or she does come to terms with right or wrong based on moral values. But then again moral values do not come with a hand book but are prefabricated from a social order.
In any case, we humans are a funny breed of species.

reply to post by tristar


In any case, we humans are a funny breed of species.

That's quotable!