Mental Health in China

Since 1993, I have been examining the interface between Eastern and Western notions of health and illness. In 1997-98, I conducted a study with colleagues at Central South University (formerly Hunan Medical University ) comparing Western psychiatric perspectives of neurasthenia (shenjing shuairuo) to Chinese patients' subjective illness experiences. In contrast to Arthur and Joan Kleinman's seminal study of neurasthenia in the 1980s, our interviews revealed evidence that rural Chinese are increasingly exhibiting preferences towards "psychologization" over more traditionally somatic forms of symptom expression. These changes in illness experience appear to be both a direct result of the stresses due to recent economic reforms as well as a by-product of increasing Westernization. Along these lines, I have also written about the changing mental health care

system in the People's Republic of China and the impact of the recent economic reforms (Chang & Kleinman, 2002).

Ongoing Projects

Along with my collaborators Huiqi Tong, Shi Qijia, and colleagues at the Shanghai Mental Health Institute, I am currently conducting a web-based survey of the practice of psychoanalysis in China . Very little has been written to date about the growing field of psychoanalysis in China and the cultural modifications that are being performed by its practitioners. The purpose of this web-based survey is to examine the (1) current scope of clinical practice (i.e., duration of treatment, demographic characteristics of clients, nature of problems being treated, perceptions of cultural "fit"), (2) training and education, and (3) cultural values of practicing analysts in China .