Third, the treatment rate among Chinese people
with severe mental illness is low. According to Ran
et al.'s (2003) study, only 5.9% of people with
schizophrenia accepted antipsychotic drug treatment;
more than one third of participants in his
study never accepted any treatment (Ran et al.,
2003). A disturbing finding was based on Shen et
al.'s (2006) study that 80.2% of those with
moderate and severe mental illness did not receive
12-months of treatment, even in Beijing and
Shanghai (Shen et al., 2006). Inaccessibility to
and/or unavailability of psychiatric services was the
most common barrier to seeking psychiatric
treatment among Chinese people with severe
mental illness. In addition, severe mental illness is
often accompanied by social stigma in China,
leading to the possibility that patients and their
families hide the problem and avoid proper
professional treatment (Tang et al., 2007). Besides
the reasons mentioned above, lack of knowledge of
mental illness was also a barrier for people with
severe mental illness seeking treatment. In Ran et
al.'s study, almost half of the relatives of people
with severe mental illness did not know what
problem the patients had; 7.9% insisted that the
abnormal behavior was caused by ghosts or gods
and 2.0% believed that the patients suffered from
physical illness (Ran et al., 2003).