The press conference for the first "blue book on mental health", jointly sponsored by the Institute of Psychology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Social Sciences Academic Press, was held in Beijing on February 22nd, 2019. The Report on the Development of Chinese People's Mental Health (2017-2018) focuses on "mental health", and studies and analyzes the mental health status of Chinese people and various groups in 2017-2018 from an academic perspective.
Fu Xiaolan, director of the Institute of Psychology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhang Kan, researcher of the institute, and Tong Genxing, deputy chief editor of Social Sciences Academic Press, attended the press conference and made speeches. Chen Zhiyan, professor from the institute introduced the contents of the blue book.
China is in a period of rapid economic and social transformation, people's pace of life is obviously accelerated, and mental health problems are increasingly prominent. National mental health issue has increasingly become a public health and social problem affecting economic and social development. As the first blue book of mental health in China, The Report on the Development of Chinese People's Mental Health (2017-2018) presents the current situation and trend of Chinese people's national mental health from multiple perspectives, and puts forward relevant suggestions for further maintaining and improving the national mental health.
According to the blue book, China has a huge demand for mental health, but more than 70 percent of the public think that psychological counseling services are not convenient.
The blue book points out that mental health literacy is an important part of health literacy. Mental health literacy affects people's cognition and response to mental illness, and the level of mental health literacy in China varies from groups. The survey from 2017 to 2018 shows that the mental health literacy level of women is slightly higher than that of men, the group literacy level of 25 to 45 years old is higher than that of other age groups, level of the eastern region is slightly higher than that of the central and western regions, and the mental health workers' literacy level is significantly higher than that of other professional groups.
The investigation on the awareness rate of common mental diseases shows that the public awareness rate of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism (autism) is higher than 90 percent and dyslexia and panic disorder account for less than 50 percent of public awareness.