China’s middle class is stressed. Can its growing mental health industry lend a helping hand?

Name: Nearly 3 years of Covid curbs take their toll on China’s middle class with many seeking counselling
Uploaded: 2024-05-06T22:00:24.000Z
Duration: 5 min 11 s
Description: Nearly 3 years of Covid curbs take their toll on China’s middle class with many seeking counselling

Demand for psychological counselling has increased in China as anxieties mount – and the industry is expanding to meet it

Worries over economic and social standing are bleeding into interpersonal relationships, professionals say, creating a need for licensed services

5-MIN READ5-MIN

He Huifengin GuangdongandMandy Zuoin Shanghai

Published: 6:00am, 7 May 2024Updated: 8:41am, 7 May 2024

In the past few years, psychological counsellor Huang Jing has watched her business thrive.

With any other industry, that would be cause for celebration – China has made private enterprise a priority as it pushes for sustained economic recovery – but a higher demand for mental health services carries other, more troubling implications.

Huang set up her first counselling company, Better Family, in Shanghai in February 2022 – not long before the city’s notorious two-month lockdown began. Business recovered quickly when quarantine lifted in June, and her practice broke even three months later. Six months after that, she opened two more offices there.

Now, she has expanded to Hangzhou, operating three offices in the Yangtze Delta tech hub.

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Nearly 3 years of Covid curbs take their toll on China’s middle class with many seeking counselling

The rapid growth in businesses like Huang’s, lucrative though it may be, reflects a rise in conditions like anxiety and depression among the public – including the middle class, widely regarded as foundational to China’s economic growth and social progress.

“People cannot help but wonder why the Chinese economy has ground to a halt,” she said. “We’ve seen a sea change in the property market, disillusionment of young people, and, particularly, mountains of pressure from parents: to make money, save money, rigid education [standards] and dim outlooks for their children’s future.”

The World Health Organization has estimated 54 million people in China suffer from depression and 41 million suffer from anxiety disorders. In recent years, health authorities have also made attempts to address the issue.

These phenomena are motivating people to seek psychological therapy and self-help in larger numbers, leading to a tenfold increase in the number of counselling institutions from 2011 to 2020 according to data from Qcc.com, a corporate credit information provider. The number soared by more than 60 per cent year on year in 2022, reaching 30,700.