Mental Health in China and the Chinese Diaspora: Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Harry Minas is Head of the Global and Cultural Mental Health Unit, Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, at The University of Melbourne. He is a psychiatrist who has worked in transcultural and global mental health over the past three decades. His mental health research, education and service development work has been in development of mental health services for multicultural communities in Australia and mental health system development in low-income and middle-income countries, and post-conflict and post-disaster settings in South-East Europe, Asia and the Pacific. He has had a particular focus on mental health and human rights, working with academic and government colleagues in several countries on improving human rights protections for persons with mental illness and psychosocial disabilities. At the University of Melbourne he has developed graduate diploma and master-level programs in transcultural psychiatry and global mental health and, through the International Mental Health Leadership Program, has trained several hundred mental health leaders in more than 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific. He has written on transcultural psychiatry and global mental health, including more than 300 peer reviewed journal papers, books, book chapters, reports and multimedia teaching products.

• A brief political, social, cultural and economic history of China.- Psychiatry in Republican China.- Psychiatric Services in Early 20th Century China.- Psychiatry in Hong Kong during the Britishperiod and post-handover.- Mental health and psychiatry during the Mao era, 1949-1976.- Mental health and psychiatry during the reform era, c1977-2012.- The Positives and Negatives of the Era from c1980 to the Implementation of the 2013 Mental Health Law.- Mental Health Law and Policy, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.- TCM treatments and Chinese conceptions of the body-mind relationship; how they differ from Western conceptions and those of biomedicine that incorporates those conceptions.- On the speed of cultural, social and economic change and the rise of the “therapeutic” response in contemporary China”.- The contribution of the global mental health movement and overseas psychiatrists to the recent effort to advance mental health and improve the mental health system.- From the Kerr Asylum to the Guanzhou Brain Hospital.- Historical overview of the establishment of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.- Mental health of the Chinese in Indonesia.- Mental health of the Chinese in Malaysia.- Mental health of the Chinese in the Philippines.- Mental health of the Chinese in Australia.- Mental health of Chinese International Students.