Why some people just won't talk about it

LONELINESS and depression are problems that cross cultural boundaries. But for Chinese people, coming to grips with those problems is likely to be more difficult.

Shame about personal problems, worry about what others think and a life centred on the family are among their reasons for such difficulties, and while therapy can help with solutions many are reluctant to seek outside help.

A group of psychiatrists and psychologists in Hong Kong for an international conference on psychotherapy for the Chinese this month, agreed that a major obstacle to Chinese people seeking is the common, deep-rooted cultural tendency to conceal personal problems.

Dr Tao Lin, from the Shenzhen Institute of Mental Health, said Chinese people are held back by a sense of shame, which had its origin in the Confucian idea of being a person of virtue. 'Chinese people are sensitive to other people's thinking or gossip about them. They will feel terribly ashamed about people's negative comments about them,' Dr Tao said.

The speakers at the Chinese University-based conference discussed how best to make psychotherapy, a Western concept which seeks to help a person overcome mental or behavioural disorders through psychoanalysis and specific treatments, more acceptable to Chinese patients.

Cultural adjustments are needed, they said. Keynote speaker Dr Tseng Wen-shing, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says the traditional concept of leading a family-centred life also makes Chinese people less inclined to seek help from the outside, especially a total stranger.