Maoism and mental illness: psychiatric institutionalization during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Abstract

This article offers a preliminary analysis of psychiatric treatment during the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the basis of interviews and rare case records obtained from ‘F Hospital’ in southern China. In contrast to the prevailing view of psychiatry during this time, which highlights either rampant patient abuse or revolutionary ideology, we show that psychiatric treatment at this facility was not radically altered by the politics of the Maoist period. Instead, treatments were informed by a predominantly biomedical understanding of mental illness, one that derived from the prior training of the facility’s lead physicians. Although political education was nominally incorporated into patient rehabilitation and outpatient care, it was not a constitutive element of inpatient treatment during the acute phase of illness.

Somatized or stigma? Causal attributions and emotional responses in shaping social distance towards people with mental illness, China

“…It is found that the willingness to work of the mental health guards at the local level in China was low [76] . Visiting a psychological counselor may be unsettling, although it is the first step in solving the issue, and there were lots of patient abuse during the Cultural Revolution [77] , [78] . Therefore, people with mental illness are encountering social exclusion, and are limited integration into communities [13] , [16] , [12] .…”

Paradox of Revolution: A Communist Patient’s Management of Neurasthenia on a Spiritual Journey

“…Our decision is partially based on realistic considerations. As pointed out by Baum and Lin (2022), research on psychotherapy in Communist China has been plagued by the lack of primary data. 4 Existing research findings have been mostly based on two streams of problematic sources of data: recordings made by foreign visitors who were exceptionally allowed to participate in guided tours in Communist China, and retrospective memoirs mostly produced by individuals who had suffered from the political turmoil.…”

“…1.There were exceptional cases in which psychiatric institutions operated normally, relatively unaffected by political pressures (Baum & Lin, 2022). …”