The government itself is a big part of the problem. It is not just that lockdowns and oppression lead to anxiety and depression. The Communist Party is also trying to use psychotherapy to mould compliant, socially conservative citizens
China’s collective mental health seemed to be declining even before the pandemic. In Shanghai the suicide rate has been rising since 2009. Covid, unsurprisingly, has not helped. Suicides in Wuhan, the city where the virus was first identified, were 79% higher in the first quarter of 2020 than in the same period a year earlier. When Shanghai entered lockdown in April, a survey of residents found that more than 40% were at risk of depression.
In some cases there are echoes of the past. Dissidents, for example, have been committed to psychiatric hospitals against their will. In 2018 Dong Yaoqiong streamed video of herself splashing ink on a poster of President Xi Jinping while accusing the party of “thought control”. Uniformed men then took her away and stuck her in a psychiatric clinic.
“If I am not careful, I can easily become their instrument of control,” a therapist for the police told Li Zhang. Ms Zhang, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, has written a book about the politics of psychotherapy called “Anxious China”. The therapist worried about having to file reports to senior police officers about her conversations with patients. That does not encourage trust, let alone healing.
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