Chinarchy

30 Million Children With Mental Disorders

by Anderson | 06/10/10 | 3 comments

Handsome reader Will sent me this story today from China Daily. Here’s some excerpts:

Nearly one in ten young Chinese under the age of 17 have some sort of mental disorders, a recent survey suggests.

The Beijing Anding Hospital and the Chinese Medical Association hosted an international conference about the mental health of young people on Sunday.

At the meeting, Chinese scholars said that at least 30 million minors in China are plagued with mental disorders or behavior problems.

By the year 2007, China had 341 million minors, accounting for 26 percent of the country’s total population.

“The number 30 million is based on regional researches in recent years. Since the mental health of children must have worsened over time, the real number could be even higher,” said Cui Yonghua, a child psychiatrist with the Beijing Anding Hospital.

“Child patients have been increasing sharply over the past years. Now we do not have enough beds for them,” said psychiatrist Cui.

This is tragic, truly. But I’m going to make a maybe somewhat controversial statement that this is a good thing. In fact, I’m sure every generation prior to this one has had a higher percentage of mental disorder. These kids acting out and receiving actual psychological attention (and media attention) means that things may get better for them and for future generations.

Still, this is a powerful and sad indicator of the terrible treatment of children.

Reader Will also juxtaposed the mental disorder story with this one from the day before. I think it speaks for itself.