Promoting mental health care
By Cai Wenjun |
July 8, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
LIVING in China for 27 years, Dr Michael Phillips, a Canadian mental health expert, has seen dramatic changes and an opening up of China's ideas about mental illness and its treatment. Still, great stigma is attached to mental illness, stemming from superstition and lack of education.
Phillips, 62, a psychiatrist specializing suicide prevention, is fluent in Mandarin, speaking to Shanghai Daily in Chinese.
In January, he became chief editor of the Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, China's first bilingual mental health journal.
He has helped train professionals and contributed to policy discussions, giving expert input on China's first mental health law. The proposed law includes protections of patients' rights and prohibits involuntary institutionalization in almost all cases. A draft has been published for public discussion but it is not known when it will be adopted by the National People's Congress, China's legislature.
"The legislation is a great milestone and I am glad to contribute," he said.
Phillips has lived in China since 1985. He had planned to work in public health but then chose mental health research and treatment.
He led family treatment for people with schizophrenia in Hunan Province in 1985, then went to Hubei Province and Beijing to help establish a suicide prevention and family support network from 1987 to 2009.
He worked with the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention to set up a suicide prevention and control center, the third such center under the guidance of World Health Organization.
After recognizing the huge burden, financial and otherwise, of mental health problems, the national government established an office for mental health within the Ministry of Health.
Mental illness accounts for around one-fifth of the cost of health care in China, far more than coronary diseases, cancer and diabetes.
The most sensitive part of the proposed mental health law is the prohibition of involuntary institutionalization unless a person is a threat to himself and others.
A patient's condition must be certified by two independent psychiatrists.
"Currently, about 80 percent of mentally ill patients are hospitalized involuntarily by their families," Phillips said. "Though it could take 10 to 20 years for proper implementation, the law itself is a great improvement.
"Respect for patients is the first step in treatment and cure."
Phillips' main effort now is to establish the first suicide prevention network in Shanghai, including a registry of people who have tried to take their own lives.
"There should be a registration database for all these patients, to better monitor and help the patients and ease the pressure on families," he said.
"Suicide prevention and control for students also should be tightened. More than 95 percent of those who attempt suicide just go back home from a hospital without any investigation, education or treatment," he said.
"This is against the law in Western countries because you can't just let people who try to kill themselves go home without any intervention. They will do it again."
For all his cultural sensitivity, Phillips can't accept a couple of customs.
Eating dog meat and forcing unwilling guests to drink alcohol.
"I was always asked to drink alcohol in the north while I was on business trips. If I refused to drink, people would scold me for having no intention of making friends. I lost some opportunities for cooperation because I refused to drink. I was even called a weird foreigner."
Phillips has two daughters born in Shanghai and studying in the city.
Phillips, 62, a psychiatrist specializing suicide prevention, is fluent in Mandarin, speaking to Shanghai Daily in Chinese.
In January, he became chief editor of the Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, China's first bilingual mental health journal.
He has helped train professionals and contributed to policy discussions, giving expert input on China's first mental health law. The proposed law includes protections of patients' rights and prohibits involuntary institutionalization in almost all cases. A draft has been published for public discussion but it is not known when it will be adopted by the National People's Congress, China's legislature.
"The legislation is a great milestone and I am glad to contribute," he said.
Phillips has lived in China since 1985. He had planned to work in public health but then chose mental health research and treatment.
He led family treatment for people with schizophrenia in Hunan Province in 1985, then went to Hubei Province and Beijing to help establish a suicide prevention and family support network from 1987 to 2009.
He worked with the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention to set up a suicide prevention and control center, the third such center under the guidance of World Health Organization.
After recognizing the huge burden, financial and otherwise, of mental health problems, the national government established an office for mental health within the Ministry of Health.
Mental illness accounts for around one-fifth of the cost of health care in China, far more than coronary diseases, cancer and diabetes.
The most sensitive part of the proposed mental health law is the prohibition of involuntary institutionalization unless a person is a threat to himself and others.
A patient's condition must be certified by two independent psychiatrists.
"Currently, about 80 percent of mentally ill patients are hospitalized involuntarily by their families," Phillips said. "Though it could take 10 to 20 years for proper implementation, the law itself is a great improvement.
"Respect for patients is the first step in treatment and cure."
Phillips' main effort now is to establish the first suicide prevention network in Shanghai, including a registry of people who have tried to take their own lives.
"There should be a registration database for all these patients, to better monitor and help the patients and ease the pressure on families," he said.
"Suicide prevention and control for students also should be tightened. More than 95 percent of those who attempt suicide just go back home from a hospital without any investigation, education or treatment," he said.
"This is against the law in Western countries because you can't just let people who try to kill themselves go home without any intervention. They will do it again."
For all his cultural sensitivity, Phillips can't accept a couple of customs.
Eating dog meat and forcing unwilling guests to drink alcohol.
"I was always asked to drink alcohol in the north while I was on business trips. If I refused to drink, people would scold me for having no intention of making friends. I lost some opportunities for cooperation because I refused to drink. I was even called a weird foreigner."
Phillips has two daughters born in Shanghai and studying in the city.
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