A team of psychiatrists has been established in Shanghai to work alongside the emergency services in helping people affected by natural disasters.

The analysts will be on hand to provide support and counseling if, for example, Typhoon Wipha causes injury or damage in Shanghai, experts said at a press conference yesterday.

Professor Zhou Dongfeng, director of the psychiatry department under the Chinese Medical Association (CMA), said psychiatrists have successfully provided counseling following a number of disasters and traumatic incidents across the country.

Xiao Zeping, director of the Shanghai Mental Health Center, said: "We have a team of psychiatrists trained in this regard but it is yet to be tested by any serious crisis in Shanghai. So we don't yet know how the team will work within itself or with third parties."

Yesterday's press event was held ahead of the World Psychiatric Association regional conference in Shanghai, which runs from today until Sunday.

This year's forum has the theme "Globalization and Mental Health" and seeks to increase communication and exchange between Chinese and foreign psychiatrists.

"As well as helping deal with large-scale crises, our psychiatrists also man a suicide hotline based at the Huilongguan Hospital in Beijing," Zhou told China Daily.

However, Professor Zhang Mingyuan of the Shanghai Mental Health Center, said the country still has a long way to go to provide a comprehensive range of mental health services.

At the end of 2006, the country had 19,130 registered psychiatrists, three-and-a-half times the number it had 25 years earlier, Zhang said.

However, globalization has brought new challenges, he said, and mental health problems are on the rise, especially among the elderly, and women and children left behind by migrant worker husbands and fathers.

Surveys conducted last year in Zhejiang Province and the city of Hefei in Anhui Province found the rate of mental illness among adults was as high as 17 percent, Zhang said.

But even in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, only 13.2 percent of sufferers were receiving medical treatment, he said. "We are training more physicians in general hospitals in order to provide a better service," Zhang said

"And to ensure it is accessible and affordable to everyone, we are suggesting the government provides financial assistance to the poor."

(China Daily September 20, 2007)