The Economist reports:

AT HOME and abroad, China's mental-health establishment suffers image problems. Overseas, China has drawn thoroughly deserved criticism for the way it has used police-run psychiatric hospitals as political prisons. At home, the system has long been seen chiefly as a sad but necessary place to cast the severely disturbed or profoundly abnormal.

Things are now changing, at least in China's cities. Rising wealth and expectations of happiness are behind unprecedented demand for counselling as well as psychiatric care. Meanwhile, the mental-health establishment is growing fast, while becoming more professional.

To read more:

http://economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9657086