Fighting China’s Stubborn Stigma Around Mental Health
Upon his diagnosis with bipolar disorder, Chen Wei, a successful businessman living in Shanghai, found himself disappointed with the services available. In 2003, he founded China’s first support group for people suffering from depression called Shanghai Tulip. In a country with widespread shame surrounding mental illness, it was a difficult move—but the needs are great, as an estimated 6 percent of China’s 1.2 billion people suffer from depression. “I think that maybe in 30 years, the public will be well educated about mental illness,” Wei says in this short film by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They will know how to deal with it just like they do with a cold.”