Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:872-875
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Who seeks mental health care in China? Diagnoses of Chinese outpatients according to DSM-III criteria and the Chinese classification system
LL Altshuler, XD Wang, HQ Qi, QA Hua, WQ Wang and ML Xia
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital.
The authors gave DSM-III diagnoses to 116 Chinese psychiatric outpatients
in Shanghai and compared them with the diagnoses of the same patients made
by a Chinese psychiatrist according to Chinese criteria. Affective
disorders were the most common DSM-III diagnoses, accounting for 26.7% of
the sample. A full range of psychopathology, including schizophrenia,
organic mental disorders, adjustment disorders, anxiety disorders, and
paranoid disorders, was seen. Some consistent differences in diagnosis by
Chinese and Western standards, especially in the area of major depression,
were found. The authors discuss the implications for interpreting
psychiatric studies from China and for future cross-cultural research
comparing U.S. and Chinese diagnoses.
