CoChat
Sign Up
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
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

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.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1023/a:1005586301895

Cites

53 of 53 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 55 references

Research works printed but not linked: 40

  1. 1991 DSM-IV Options Book: Work in Progress. Washington, DC: APA.
  2. Breggin, R. and G.R. Breggin 1994 Talking back to Prozac. New York: St. Martin's Paperbacks.
  3. Chinese Medical Association 1990 Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, second edition. Hunan Medical University (in Chinese).
  4. Chinese Medical Association and Nanjing Medical University 1995 Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, second edition, revised (CCMD-2-R). Nanjing: Dong Nan University Press (in Chinese).
  5. Cooper, J.E., R.E. Kendell, B.J. Gurland, L. Sharpe, J.R.M. Copeland and R. Simon 1972 Psychiatric Diagnosis in New York and London. Oxford: Maudsley Monograph No. 20.
  6. Da, D. 1993 A Preliminary Inquiry into Suicide in China. In: Social Observation in Special Zone. J. Peng, ed. pp. 492–510. Shenzhen: Haitian Publishing House (in Chinese).
  7. Ding, B.K., X.X. Qin, X.B. Li, Y. Wang, H.Y. Xue and X.L. Liu 1998 A Double Blind Controlled Study of Depression Treated with Sertraline and Fluoxetine. Journal of Clinical Psychological Medicine 8: 72–73 (in Chinese).
  8. Feng, J.C. 1996 Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China's Cultural Revolution. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, Inc.
  9. Foucault, M. 1980 Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. New York: Pantheon.
  10. Gan, Y.F., Y.Y Yang, L. Xu and B.H. Ji 1998 A Preliminary Study of the Diagnosis and Treatment of Depressive Episodes in Primary Care. Chinese Mental Health Journal 12: 15–16 (in Chinese).
  11. He, Z.X. 1996 Suicide and Life. Guangzhou: Guangzhou Publishing House (in Chinese).
  12. Hong, B.S. 1996 Baiyoujie in the Treatment of Students' Emotions Causing School Refusal. Paper presented in the National Conference on Schizophrenia and Psychopharmacology, September 16–19, 1996, Hangzhou, China.
  13. Ji, W.H. and S.T. Zhai 1995 An Analysis of 3514 Calls to a Crisis Intervention Hotline. Journal of Clinical Psychological Medicine 5: 74–75 (in Chinese).
  14. Kleinman, A. and J. Kleinman 1995 Remembering the Cultural Revolution: Alienating Pains and the Pain of Alienation/ Transformation. In: Chinese Society and Mental Health. W.S. Tseng, T.Y. Lin and E.K. Yeh, eds. pp. 141–155. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
  15. 1996 The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriation of Suffering in our Times. Daedalus 125: 1–23.
  16. In press: Suicide as resistance in Chinese society. In: E. Perry and M. Selden eds. Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge.
  17. Li, Z.S. 1994 The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 109–110. London: Chatto and Windus.
  18. Lin, Y.H. 1990 The Weight of Mount Tai: Patterns of Suicide in Traditional Chinese History and Culture. PhD Thesis, The University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A.
  19. Liu, X.H. 1982 Neurasthenia. In: Chinese Medical Encyclopedia – Psychiatry, pp. 75–76. Shanghai: Shanghai Publishing House of Science and Technology (in Chinese).
  20. Liu, Z.H., Q. Yang, M.S. Huang, M.Z. Xiang, M.D. Xu, Y.H. Zhang, Y.Y. Du, G.C. Hu and L. Ye 1992 Clinical Research on Neurosis – a Summary Report. Clinical Research on Neurosis, pp. 3–4. Department of Psychiatry, West China University of Medical Sciences, Sichuan, China (in Chinese).
  21. Schwarcz, V. 1996 The Pane of Sorrow: Public Uses of Personal Grief in Modern China. Daedalus 125: 119–148.
  22. Shen Q.J., S. Lee and H. Gao 1998 Rethinking the Epidemiology of Affective Disorders in China. Chinese Journal of Psychiatry 31: 240–242 (in Chinese).
  23. Tian, Z.W., H. Chen, X.Z. Zhang and J.D. Hou 1997 Rediagnosis of Neurosis at a General Hospital. Health Psychology 5: 170–171 (in Chinese).
  24. Tu, M.W. 1996 Destructive Will and Ideological Holocaust: Maoism as a Source of Social Suffering in China. Daedalus 125: 149–180.
  25. Walker, S. 1996 A Dose of Insanity: Mind, Medicine, and Misdiagnosis. New York: Wiley.
  26. Wang, X.L., L. Li, Z.C. Wang and H.D. Xu 1997 A Survey of Current Uses of Antidepressants. Health Psychology 5: 69–71 (in Chinese).
  27. World Health Organization 1992 The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behaviour Disorders – Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines. Geneva: W.H.O.
  28. Xu, S.H., Z.X. Gao and B.X. Xu 1993 The Application of the Diagnostic Criteria of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders. Chinese Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 19: 59–60 (in Chinese).
  29. Yan, Y.Y. 1996 The Flow of Gifts. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  30. Young, D. 1989 Chinese Diagnostic Criteria and Case Examples of Mental Disorders. Hunan: Hunan University Press (in Chinese).
  31. 1997 Prozac in the Treatment of Neurasthenia: A Clinical Update. Paper presented at a dinner symposium “Experiencing Prozac: A Decade of Progress in Mind,” during the Regional Meeting of theWorld Psychiatric Association, Beijing, China, October 7–10, 1997.
  32. 1997a How Mild Depression Can be Recognized. Sichuan Mental Health 10: 204–207 (in Chinese).
  33. 1997b Crisis Intervention and the Prevention of Suicide. Beijing: Publishing House of People's Health (in Chinese).
  34. Zhang, J.Z. 1997 The Urgent Need to Increase General Hospital Doctors' Ability to Recognize Depression. Chinese Journal of Psychiatry 30: 195 (in Chinese).
  35. Zhang, M.Y. 1986 The Diagnostic Problem of Neurasthenia. Chinese Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry 19: 261–263 (in Chinese).
  36. Zhang, X.L. 1994 Grass Soup. Boston: Godine.
  37. Zhang, B.Y., J.W. Dong, X.R. Xu, M. Ao, and P. Wong 1990 Telephone Psychological Consultation – a Summary of 100 Days of “Hopeful Hotline” Service. Chinese Mental Health Journal 4: 177–180 (in Chinese).
  38. Zhang, M.D., J.L. Ji, Z.M. Chu, H.J. Yan, S.H. Wong, Z. Lu, H.Y. Zhang, X.J. Cui and P.F. Yao 1995 The Shanghai Mental Health Hotline: A Report of 2144 Callers in a Year. Journal of Clinical Psychological Medicine 5: 195–197 (in Chinese).
  39. Zhang, W.X., Y.C. Shen, S.R. Li et al. 1998 Epidemiological Investigation on Mental Disorders in 7 Areas of China. Chinese Journal of Psychiatry 31: 69–71 (in Chinese).
  40. Zhou, J.H. 1988 A Probe into theMentality of Sixty-five Rural YoungWomen Giving Birth to Baby Girls. Chinese Sociology and Anthropology (Journal of Translations) 20: 93–102.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–148 of 148

Related

See all

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

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review