UMaine Psychologist Joins Special Delegation to China
Contact: Doug Nangle, (207) 581-2045 (after Nov. 20); George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO, Maine — A University of Maine psychology professor is part of a delegation of 20 American psychologists currently in China exploring ways to help the world’s largest country with a major healthcare problem: mental illness and insufficient resources to deal with it.
The delegation returns Nov. 20 after nearly two weeks in the People’s Republic of China, meeting with leading psychologists and medical school faculty, and touring schools where young Chinese psychologists are trained.
“The goal is to form connections and collaborations with Chinese colleagues,” says Douglas Nangle, professor of psychology and director of UMaine’s doctoral training program in clinical psychology. “This focuses on clinical psychology and attempts by the Chinese to integrate psychology into their healthcare system. China, even more than the U.S., emphasizes medical and psychiatric approaches to mental health problems, and psychological approaches are not all that well developed.”
Led by the clinical psychologist Norine Johnson, researcher, author and pioneer in the field of psychology, the group hopes to learn about progress Chinese psychologists have made in recent decades addressing mental health as a part of Chinese healthcare.
China has a very long and proud tradition of a more holistic approach to medicine emphasizing mind, spirit and body, according to Nangle, who left with the delegation on Nov. 9. Western mental health practices were first introduced by missionaries in the late 1800s, but their progress was halted under the communist rule of Mao Tse-tung from 1949 to 1976. The Communist Party of China dismissed mental illness as something political in nature that could be corrected through re-education. Since the late 1970s, when China began opening up to Western nations and influences, the nation of 1.3 billion people has seen revitalized interest in integrating Eastern and Western approaches to mental illness.
Nangle, who began teaching a graduate course this fall at UMaine on mental health services in China, says Chinese healthcare experts conservatively estimate as many as 113 million people are in need of psychological treatment. The lack of trained professionals, facilities and treatment options, particularly in rural China, is a major challenge facing the Chinese people, he says.
Though most epidemiological studies suggest the prevalence of psychiatric disorders is less than in the U.S., there is evidence that substance abuse, suicide, depression and divorce are on the rise, Nangle says. Many speculate that these problems are associated with the rapid economic expansion.
“Even with the lower prevalence estimates, if you consider just the sheer number of people, it’s an unbelievable need,” says Nangle. “We’ll be learning more about mental health issues and their healthcare systems, and creating an exchange that will continue after the delegation returns to the U.S.”
The delegation is being arranged through People to People, an American international program establish in 1956 to help people of different nations learn to live in peace through better communication and person-to-person interaction.
The psychologists’ delegation will do most of its networking in the cities of Beijing, Guilin and Shanghai.
The group also will visit some of China’s famous gardens, temples and tourist attractions. The trip has special personal meaning for Nangle. He and his wife April O’Grady, also a UMaine psychologist, have an adopted Chinese daughter and hope to adopt a second Chinese girl in the near future.