»Mental Illness in China«
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This is a good example of the tendency of societies which change rapidly (as in USA 1900-present) to foster greater incidences of mental illness...and the necessity of scientifically sound treatment programs in such places...not just the standard line of, "Oh pray hard and change your lifestyle, you'll feel better"...you wonder where all these genocidal dictators and suicidal rockstars are coming from all of a sudden? Industrialization... BEIJING (Reuters) - Suicide is the number one cause of death among people aged 20 to 35 in China, where an estimated quarter of a million people a year -- or 685 a day -- take their lives, state media said Monday.
Each year an additional 2.5 million to 3.5 million Chinese unsuccessfully attempt suicide, which stood as the fifth major cause of death among the country's 1.3 billion people, the China Daily said. Disproportionate rates of suicide and depression among young people appear to be a direct result of increasing stress in China's rapidly changing society. "Society is full of pressure and competition, so young people, lacking experience in dealing with difficulties, tend to get depressed," Liu Hong, a Beijing psychiatrist, was quoted as saying. More than 60 percent of people who took part in a survey of 15,431 Chinese suffering depression over the past two years were in their 20s or 30s, the newspaper said. The escalating problem had drawn increasing concern from the government and public alike, leading to the creation of a national, 24-hour free suicide prevention hotline in August 2003. Since then, more than 220,000 people had called the number, though Canadian Michael Phillips, executive director of the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center, said only one in 10 callers could get through on the first try. "That is very dangerous because most of the callers are anxious and may commit suicide impulsively," Phillips was quoted as saying. posted by arkhamite |
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| in-my-opinion.orgGirls and Boys, Body & Health, Food & Diet, Home & GardenDiets, Medicine, Food, Body, Workout, SexualityMental Illness in China |
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 arkhamite: This is a good example of the tendency of societies which change rapidly Why would they have this tendency? I was thinking...guessing..that China would be very competitive, everyone clamoring for that one thing, because of ...population, upbringing, etc. posted by sangu |
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 arkhamite: and the necessity of scientifically sound treatment programs in such places...not just the standard line of, "Oh pray hard and change your lifestyle, you'll feel better"... I don't see how your report leads to such conclusion. You try to convince us (again) how great medication/treatment is. Sorry, I am not convinced. That more and more Chinese commit suicide may be a fact (or not), but that doesn't lead to any conclusion regarding a specific kind of treatment. posted by knn |
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arkhamite: ...and the necessity of scientifically sound treatment programs in such places... Such as?... (not an opinion,... just a serious question!) posted by tozy |
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tozy: arkhamite: ...and the necessity of scientifically sound treatment programs in such places... Such as?... (not an opinion,... just a serious question!) tozy, that is the most difficult question in the world, and therefore not a good question for me. All I can tell you is from my experience, people with mental illness who do not seek treatment almost invariably end up worse off than they were to start with. Treatment can involve counselling or medication. That's all I can say. posted by arkhamite |
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I very much agree with this statement... posted by tozy |
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arkhamite: All I can tell you is from my experience, people with mental illness who do not seek treatment almost invariably end up worse off than they were to start with. Depends on your definition of worse. Maybe being dead is better than having taken 1 drop of "medication" posted by knn |
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knn: Maybe being dead is better than having taken 1 drop of "medication" Er...breathe, Holy, breathe... keep cool,... alrighty? knn, can you elaborate on that? posted by tozy |
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 tozy: knn: Maybe being dead is better than having taken 1 drop of "medication" Breathe, Holy, breathe... keep cool,... alrighty? knn, can you elaborate on that? Yeah, that's a real inflammatory statement.. Can you prove that being dead is better? If not, don't say 'maybe', it's just pointless. I think it's better to try medication that has proved effective in many cases at least, much better than uh dying. Medication or counselling, at least one or the other, whichever is more appropriate. Arkhamite was right there. You don't have the right to give up your life without some kind of a fight for it, and you definitely shouldn't say dumb things like what has been quoted above. posted by ryder |
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ryder: Yeah, that's a real inflammatory statement.. Can you prove that being dead is better? I can't. ryder: I think it's better to try medication that has proved effective in many cases at least Only if you don't believe in life after death. If there is a divine rule that god gives us problems (like illnesses and other problems) to solve by ourselves or with prayer and when you solve them with brutality (killing someone) or medication (suppressing the problem) and you get into hell when you used these unnatural methods, then being dead is better than taking medication. I think Christian Science is such a religion. They want to heal everything with prayer and don't visit doctors. Or maybe there is a rule that if you solve mental illness with medication that you get a worse one next life then it's better to be dead, too. posted by knn |
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knn: Only if you don't believe in life after death. Well I guess to someone who believes in that and also believes she/he will end up 'well off' or whatever after death, death would seem the better option. I don't believe in life after death. But that still doesn't resolve my question of how it could be right for a human to take their own life, or give in seemingly helplessly without a fight even if there was a chance they could end up living normally. If you believe in a God, then God has been so kind as to give you this good chance of a life and you shouldn't throw the towel in so quickly. knn: ryder: :
Yeah, that's a real inflammatory statement.. Can you prove that being dead is better? I can't.   didn't expect you to answer.
Arkhamite was saying that life would become worse i.e., more painful and terrifying, if you exacerbate the illness by not trying to treat it. You could be driven to suicide if it went that far, and I don't think killing yourself does your 'future' chances any good either. posted by ryder |
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ryder: If you believe in a God, then God has been so kind as to give you this good chance of a life and you shouldn't throw the towel in so quickly. That is a whole new topic a la "If god condemns homosexuality why are some people homosexual?" and has been discussed here and there in the forum. posted by knn |
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knn: Or maybe there is a rule that if you solve mental illness with medication that you get a worse one next life then it's better to be dead, too. Oh well, everyone can speculate. I say, that if there is an afterlife and everything should balance out, then the rule should be that if the illness is curable the person is judged by the deeds in their continuing lives, and if it is incurable then the person is judged until then. If the illness is incurable and the person takes their own life, then Hell it is for they who destroy and waste the life. Religion can make this life seem totally worthless to live.  But don't reply, you'd be offtopic  knn: If there is a divine rule that god gives us problems (like illnesses and other problems) to solve by ourselves So.. using medication is not solving the problem ourselves? So we have to sit in the lab and do the same research and development to eventually arrive at the same pill that another human developed, or arrive at the same counselling technique, and only then would we be absolved of the "ill effects" of "not solving the issue ourselves"? And how can you really consider medication unnatural? Supplements of vitamins or minerals are just our imitation versions of what is already found in nature, only better digestible. Antibiotics or antivenom or any antidote is evolved from the respective 'natural' thing that causes the illness. The article was about increasing competitiveness causing mental illness in China right. Only an adaptive example: here, we have these Board exams, public exams taken after tenth and twelfth grade, and the education board has a helpline for kids who get stressed out because of these exams. They even resort to suicide, if they think that they haven't done well or have a chance of failing a year. They're under a lot of pressure and stress from very high competition. This is a common situation, I assume. But the problem prevalent is only Depression leading to numerous things like anti-social or suicidal tendencies, nothing more serious than that, and this can definitely be dealt with by counselling/therapy. posted by ryder |
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 The replies so far seem very US-centric. A Nation known (at least over here) for it's citizens dependence on "Therepy". Not being from the US, I saw a different story. A load of people are depressed because their lives are crap and so commit suicide to end the suffering. Not a tale of escalating mental health issues, rather a tale of decreasing living standards, of unhappyness, of desperation. I've never considered being unhappy to be an illness so I have a problem with the idea that someone is really unhappy to the point of suicide is automatically off their tree. posted by Marl64 |
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Marl64: The replies so far seem very US-centric. A Nation known (at least over here) for it's citizens dependence on "Therepy". American deaths by suicide in 2002= Deaths per 100,000 population: 11.0 (2002) UK deaths by suicide in 2002 per 100,000 population (calculated by me) from the 2002 official UK population of 59,200,000 and the # of UK suicides in 2002 (5,882) from samaritans.org = approx 10 per 100,000 population. I had to calculate this myself because your national statistics site  is shit on this issue. Now consider that the number of US firearms suicides in 2002 per 100,000 population was 5.9 according to the above CDC site. Again your "National Statistics" site is of no help, so I did some searching. The following site  lists 1999 firearm suicide rates in the USA as 6.08 per 100,000. It also lists those in UK per 100,000 population as .22. Now from the above statistics we can state that the US/UK suicide ratio for 2002 is 11/10, a statistical tie. And the US/UK firearm suicide ratio for 1999 is ~6.08/.22 or 30/1. 2002 and 1999 are only three years apart so lets compare these ratios. Although our two counties' suicide rates are virtually identical, the firearm suicide rate in the US is thirty times higher. I would suggest that if you took firearms out of the equation, our suicide rate would be lower than yours. I don't know of any reliable statistics on the rate of psychiatric care in either the US or the UK due to privacy restrictions, thus I don't know whether or not we have a higher rate of psychiatric patients. However we definitely have a lower incidence of suicide than the UK if you disregard firearms suicide. Thus if we take at face value your statement that the US is more dependent on therapy, we can say that it is helping us if we disregard the difference between our two countries in gun ownership. That is, the US is less suicidal than the UK, if we take into account this manner (firearms) in which Americans commit suicide far more frequently than the British for the simple reason that we have more guns. I know knn will say this is a trick because maybe those people who - because they didn't have guns - would be unable to commit suicide would find some other way...but that is in itself a trick when you consider how much less "complicated" it is to commit suicide with a firearm compared to pills, razor blades, rope, etc. A suicidal person with a gun just has to aim and fire...the other ways require a lot of preparation. posted by arkhamite |
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The time now is 24 May 2012, 17:18 php B.B. |