The Mind in Crisis: The politicisation of the mind in China 1949-2013

Since reform and opening China's suicide rate has thrown up two puzzling sets of statistics. The first is that, according to a study published in the Lancet in 2002, from 1995-1999 rural suicides were 3-5 times more prevalent than urban suicides, and females killed themselves more than men (Philips 2002). The second puzzling statistic is that in the years following the Lancet report the overall suicide rate in China plummeted, from 37.8 per 100,000 in 2010 to just over 3 per 100,000 (Economist 2014). I propose that by looking at the wider discourse of suicide and mental health in China it can serve to provide a wider context for this shift, and to expand our understanding of suicide and mental health within China beyond the realm of the family, as seen by Wu Fei, and to create a clearer understanding of the role of society in suicide and mental health, as per Durkheim or Foucault, but in a modern Chinese context. As such, it may have implications wider for suicidology and for our understandings of how social forces and discourses work on political actors.