With China’s rapid economic development, disparity between the rich and the poor is enlarged in the period of social transformation, and pressure from work and life gives people too much mental pressure which is extremely likely to cause mental health problems. According to mental health center’s statistics of Chinese center for disease control and prevention, there are more than 0.1 billion patients with mental disorders at various degrees in China in 2011, among whom, there are more than 16 million patients with serious mental illness.
Serious mental illness mainly includes 13 kinds of diseases caused by epilepsy, such as mental disorder, dementia, burst of depression and mania, etc. Patients with serious illness lose self-consciousness of the disease or control of behaviors, which is extremely likely to lead to self harm or actions endangering public safety and other people’s safety. Mental illness is ranked first in China’s total burden of disease, which accounts for about 20% of the total. Most serious patients have no financial ability and need long-term drug treatment, counseling and professional supervision. Expensive treatment and hospitalization expense is a great burden for ordinary families.
Statistics from mental health center of Chinese center for disease control and prevention show that only less than 20% of serious mental patients can accept systematic and effective treatment. Generally, long-term patients can cause great damage to social function. To maintain social stability, there is crying need for the government to perfect the management system and social security system. In recent years, the Ministry of Health asks all levels to monitor serious mental patients according to “Serious Mental Illness Management and Treatment Standard”. In addition, on August 30 of this year, National Ministry of Health and other five ministries issue “Instruction on Carrying out of Urban and Rural Residents Serious Illness Insurance Work” and will bring serious illness like serious mental disease and so on into medical insurance of serious illness. Part of the cities will launch free treatment. The implementation of the policy enables patients to receive treatment, thus driving sale of serious psychotic drugs and providing huge market space for serious psychotic drugs.