China's eco progress triggers mental illnesses
BEIJING: China's nearly double-digit economic growth has contributed to a rapidly rising army of around 16 million mental patients, health minister Zhang Wenkang has said. "China's rapid socio-economic development, accelerating rate of urbanisation and aging population, as well as intensified competition and the rising unemployment rate, are responsible for increasingly causing adverse impacts" on people's health, Zhang said on Saturday while speaking at a forum to mark World Health Day 2001. A nation-wide survey shows that in recent years Chinese people are more and more vulnerable to such mental illnesses, such as depression, neurosis, alcoholism and senile dementia. The prevalence rate of mental illness among Chinese has risen from 0.54 per cent in the 1970s to the current 1.347 per cent, warned Deng Pufang, chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation. China's ministry of health sponsored the forum to call for more attention to pay to mental health in communities, which was the theme of this year's World Health Day. Under the slogan "Stop Exclusion, Dare To Care", the World Health Organisation (WHO) aims to create a more favourable social environment for the world's 400 million victims of mental illness. Zhang conceded that, as a developing country, China is still comparatively inefficient in rehabilitating mental patients, especially those in outlying and vast mountainous regions. (PTI) For reprint rights:Times Syndication Service