While budgets for child and adolescent mental health services are being frozen or cut in the UK, China is seeking to expand provision, promote psychotherapeutic approaches and adopt preventative measures.
Since 2012 Beijing nurseries and schools have promoted mental health as well as physical fitness. Last year China passed its first mental health law and told paediatricians to screen patients for warning signs: Do the three-month-old baby's eyes follow moving objects? At 18 months, can she make eye contact? Officials have also enlisted foreign psychotherapists to help train specialists and increase awareness.
"The government is paying a lot of attention to psychological health," said Dr Zheng Yi, president of the Chinese Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and deputy director of Beijing Anding Hospital at Capital Medical University.
The preliminary results of research he has overseen, to be released later this year, suggest around 15% of Chinese children have mental health problems. He said that compared favourably with a rate of around 20% elsewhere, but noted that some problems, such as anxiety disorders, appear to be on the increase.
[For more of this story, written by Tania Branigan, go to http://www.theguardian.com/wor...ildren-mental-health]
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