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| | Brief review of the conditions from 1979 to 1990 | | 2005-2-22 0:41:14 ShanghaiTongji University,Medical School Pr.Zhao Xudong |  Brief review of the conditions from 1979 to 1990
In 1979, benefited from the reform policies, some psychiatrists and psychologists dared to discuss the issues of mental health in ethnic groups and to distribute a collection of research-papers in small circles. They formed then teams and started a series of investigations dealing with mental health problems among some minority nationalities in provinces such as Yunnan, Xinjiang, Sichuan, etc..
In the 1980s, many observations from field works including some well-designed epidemiological researches were published in professional journals. Methodology of cultural anthropology was introduced into psychiatric research in China for the first time, although it was hard to conduct field works in the strict anthropological sense. Colleagues in Jilin Province, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Sichuan Province, and Guangdong Province were active. Some projects with large samples were influential, e.g, the works dealing with the following ethnic groups: Jinuo, Lisu, Bai, Korean, Uygur, Kazak, Mongolian, Yi, She, etc... A few researches were focused on majority nationality - Han Chinese, in order to find meaningful relation between mental health and sub-cultural differences among Han Chinese sharing the same main-stream culture but living in different geographic regions. These researches were meaningful in many aspects.
Firstly, they have widened the perspectives of Chinese psychiatrists from Han to other nationalities, and drawn the outline of mental health status of various ethnic groups. They showed also that different nationalities had common problems and needs, while they were confronted with their own unique difficult situations.
Alcoholism and other kinds of substance-abuse, marriages in proximity of blood, suicide, social condition of patients and out-come of mental disorders were the mostly emphasized or most serious and wide-spread problems.
Secondly, they have introduced cultural consciousness into Chinese psychiatry which had been very biologically-oriented before.
Thirdly, some cultural-bound psychopathological symptoms or syndromes were reported. For example, many literatures have discussed the influences of cultural background on neurosis and on psychotic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations. The most famous example was the detailed description of the epidemic "Koro-syndrome" in Hainan and Guangdong.
Fourthly, many young psychiatrists who were interested in cross-cultural psychiatry have been trained through these projects.
Besides many cross-sectional studies, a few projects have employed longitudinal designs or designs with controls. The study on Jinuo in Yunnan Province (one of the smallest minority nationalities in China), for example, was started in 1979, and then repeated every 10 years, with the hypothesis about the complicated relations between rapid socio-cultural changes and mental health in the minority nationalities. A survey in Liangshan, Sichuan, was an example that the author utilized the discrepancy between the Yi people living in the countryside and those moved into the newly appeared town to find possible impacts resulted by stressful life events on mental health.
Some researchers used quantitative methodology in their studies to gather data. This was often seen in the studies to develop standard diagnostic tools or to compare psychopathological phenomenon between different populations. Such projects were efficient, but the interpretations were often speculations lacking of in-depth observation and understanding, not to mention close and intensive interaction with the studied samples.
Since 1980, the national conference of cultural psychiatry has been held every 4 years. In 1988, a chapter about "Culture and mental health" was written for one of the most important textbooks for psychiatry. In the same year, the first post-graduate student trained in cultural psychiatry graduated with master-degree. In 1989, the Chinese Association of Psychiatry has set up its section for ethnic and cultural psychiatry.
(Edited by Shuping,Tan) | | [CLOSE] |
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Ministry of Health, (2003) No.013
ICP:No.040657