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Mental illnesses cause concern
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ROUGHLY 16 million Chinese are currently suffering from some form of mental illness, a senior Chinese official disclosed in Beijing on Saturday.
Zhang Wenkang, China's health minister, made the remark on Saturday morning at a forum to mark the World Health Day 2001, which fell on Saturday.
China's rapid social and economic development, accelerating rate of urbanization and aging population, as well as intensified competition and the rising unemployment rate, are “having increasingly adverse impacts" on people's health, according to the official.
A nationwide survey shows that in recent years Chinese people are more and more vulnerable to such illnesses as depression, neurosis, alcoholism, drug dependence and senile dementia.
Hence, China's Ministry of Health sponsored the forum to call for more attention to pay to mental health in communities, which is the theme of this year's World Health Day.
At the seminar, officials and experts read President Jiang Zemin's message to the World Health Organization (WHO), in which Jiang called for the efforts of the whole of society to create a better environment for people with psychological illnesses.
Vice-Premier Li Lanqing also sent a message to the seminar, saying it is crucial to protect the people's mental health.
Under the slogan “Stop exclusion, dare to care", the WHO aims to create a more favourable social environment for the world's 400 million victims of mental illness.
Minister Zhang conceded that, as a developing country, China is still comparatively inefficient in rehabilitating mental patients,especially those in outlying and mountainous regions.
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 launched a massive countrywide rehabilitation project for mental patients in 1991, which provided comprehensive and efficient treatment for 1.22 million severely ill mental patients.
In the coming five years, China is to provide rehabilitation services for another 2.4 million mental patients, and help them resume their normal lives as soon as possible, Deng said.(SD-Xinhua)
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