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).