Comparing diagnostic methods for mental disorders in China.

摘要

In The Lancet today, Michael Phillips and colleagues present an investigation that was done in mainland China, and report a prevalence of psychiatric disorders that was higher than previously documented. The rare combination of size, stratified random sampling, very high response rate, and ascertainment of urban and rural samples within a medium-income country draws attention to the unusual nature of this dataset. Since most of the previous epidemiological studies in China have been undertaken by native investigators and the reports have been written in Chinese (five of seven studies cited by Phillips and colleagues), this work provides western readers with an invaluable insight into the nature and distribution of mental disorders in China.