A study published in the recent issue of China Economic Review, entitled ‘The Prevalence of Depression and Depressive Symptoms among Adults in China: Estimation Based on a National Household Survey’, co-authored by Prof. Chee-Ruey Hsieh from Duke Kunshan University and two scholars from Peking University and Columbia University, examines the prevalence of mental illness in China. This paper, based on China Family Panel Studies 2012 dataset that covered 25 provinces and 57000 individuals, is the first nationally representative research in China in this field. It focuses on depression and depressive symptoms measured by the internationally comparable CES-D metrics, and reveals that the prevalence of depression is high (37.9% for depressive symptoms and 4.1% for depression) and that the prevalence of depression is distributed unevenly across regions and subpopulations. People with lower income, lower education level, the elderly and people living in central and western China and rural areas are more at risk.
The publication of this paper coincided with the high-level conference ‘Out of Shadows: Making Mental Health a Global Priority’ organized by the WHO and the World Bank on April 13-14, 2016. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and President from the World Bank Group Jim Yong Kim attended the conference, which is aimed at raising people’s awareness of the huge and often neglected burden of mental illness, and urging all countries to join forces in tackling the three gaps in mental health prevention and treatment, namely stigma, inadequate funding and poor health systems.
The WHO has already placed ‘No Health without Mental Health’ as the core concept of the Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020. Both this paper and the conference conveyed the message that mental health is important and needs to be placed as priority of health and development research.
Prof. Hsieh said, ‘Our research calls for higher social awareness of mental health problems in China, as the prevalence of depression is high. The subpopulations that are vulnerable to mental health problems – the poor, the low-educated people, the elderly and people living in central and western China and rural areas, suggest these people need more attention and help in seeking health care services. Policies on aging population, income distribution, rural-urban development and resource allocation all need to consider mental health. Given that there are still many knowledge gaps in this issue, mental health is going to be one of the research areas at the Global Health Research Center of Duke Kunshan University.’
Professor Chee Ruey Hsieh, head of health policy and systems research at Global Health Research Center, Duke Kunshan University
