UBC Reports | Vol. 48 | No. 12 | Oct. 10, 2002

UBC Psychologists Forge Links With China

By Steven Taylor & Kerry Jang

Ed.’s Note: The following is a submission to UBC Reports by members of the Dept. of Psychiatry following their recent trip to China.

The face of Chinese mental healthcare is changing rapidly with the adoption of evidence-based approaches to diagnosis and treatment in place of traditional Chinese medicine and treatments imported from the Soviet era.

The interest of Chinese clinicians and researchers in psychological work at UBC began in the early 1990s. Mental health professionals from the Suzhou Psychiatric Hospital and Hangzhou University approached UBC psychologist and psychiatrist Dr. W. John Livesley, then head of the Dept. of Psychiatry.

This past July, a group of UBC psychologists were invited to the 1,000-bed Anhui Provincial Hospital in Hefei to give a series of workshops on the research and treatment of mental disorders. Lying west of Shanghai, Hefei is about the size of Vancouver, and is a major industrial centre and research base in China.

Unlike psychiatric departments in many Canadian hospitals, Chinese hospital departments are truly interdisciplinary. Although Chinese mental health practitioners are keen to adopt Western methods of diagnosis and treatment, Western practitioners can benefit by learning about Chinese systems for integrating mental health care.

In July a series of meetings and seminars at Anhui hospital was organized to discuss Western and Chinese approaches to mental disorders. Dr. Kerry Jang from the Division of Behavioural Science, UBC Dept. of Psychiatry, Dr. Amy Janeck, Clinic Director at the UBC Dept. of Psychology, and Dr. Steven Taylor, from the Division of Behavioural Science in the UBC Dept. of Psychiatry, all made presentations.

Academic exchanges are important to Chinese hospitals because they help fulfill criteria Chinese hospitals need to be upgraded by the Chinese government. Anhui mental health workers have asked to visit UBC next year in order to extend their training in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. These exchanges provide unprecedented opportunities for cross-cultural research. This kind of research has important implications for the Canadian health-care system as Canada’s population becomes increasingly multicultural.

Steven Taylor is a professor and Kerry Jang is an associate professor both in the Dept. of Psychiatry.