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Cited by 148Historical Psychiatry and Medical PracticesMental Health and PsychiatryPsychology and Mental Health

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 55 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Diagnosis Postponed: Shenjing Shuairuo and the Transformation of Psychiatry in Post-Mao China

Lee, Sing·1999·Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
DOI 10.1023/a:1005586301895
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Abstract

Building on Arthur Kleinman's seminal work in Hunan, this paper examines the social context in which shenjing shuairuo (neurasthenia), a ubiquitous psychiatric disease in China prior to 1980, is contested, marginalized, and reconstituted as the popular Western disease of depression among academic psychiatrists in urban China. It is argued that this dramatic change of diagnostic labelling is not only based on empirical evidence. Rather, it is also a product of interests and strategies that are themselves embedded in a confluence of historical, social, political, and economic forces. Specifically, China's open door policy, the hegemony of DSM discourse, the depoliticization of experience, and the transnational commercialization of suffering have all played a role in creating the new-found disease of depression. As a new social construct in China, depression may serve different social functions for different institutional groups, such as drug companies' marketing of new antidepressant therapy, and academic psychiatrists' effort to render the study of suicide more admissible to the state. Because of the government's budgetary limitations and drastic changes in health care financing, however, global diagnostic technology and markets for drugs merely reinforce people's markedly unequal access to health care, which is but one facet of the pervasive social inequity that is China nowadays.

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Metadata

Authors
Lee, S.
Affiliations
Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
Corresponding author
Lee, Sing
Venue
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
1999-09
Volume
23
Issue
3
Pages
349-380
ISSN
  • 0165-005X (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-076X
DOI
10.1023/a:1005586301895
OpenAlex
W1527059713
Cited by
147
References
55
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 3
FWCI
11.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Culture Medicine and Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychology and Mental Health
Keywords
neurasthenia, depression, psychiatric diagnosis, diagnostic labeling, DSM, Western psychiatry, post-Mao China, open door policy, depoliticization, suicide, health care access, social inequities, Arthur Kleinman
MeSH terms
Mental Disorders, China, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Depression, Humans, Medicine, Chinese Traditional, Neurasthenia, Politics, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Psychiatry, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, History, 19th Century, History, 20th Century

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