‘Slackers and bad students’: Chinese hospital gives kids with learning difficulties a chance to top the class and fight stigma
- A hospital in China has branched out from its core services to offer a novel new programme — helping children with learning difficulties
- The popular outpatient service run by the hospital’s psychology department has attracted widespread praise online
A major Shanghai hospital has attracted praise for running an unconventional programme outside its core health services – treating children with learning difficulties.
The Children’s Hospital of Fudan University offers a treatment programme for children struggling with learning every Thursday afternoon, helping up to 20 a day.
The outpatient service is run by the hospital’s psychology department and has proved popular, with places in August already fully booked, Shanghai-based news website eastday.com reported.
The Shanghai hospital started the programme two years ago and has so far treated more than 1,500 children.
In an article published on WeChat earlier this week, the psychology department of the hospital said learning difficulties affect about 20 per cent of children, citing academic literature from both China and overseas.
The article also revealed that boys are more likely to have learning difficulties than girls.
According to the article, learning difficulties can be linked to a lack of family education, neural development, mental disorders and environmental factors which can all contribute to developmental problems in children.
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Symptoms of learning difficulties range from difficulty reading, dysgraphia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and delayed mental development.
“Many children with learning difficulties are often misunderstood by their parents and teachers and considered ‘study slackers’ or ‘bad students’ with poor scores. The fact is that after standardised treatments such as medication, behavioural therapy and rehabilitation training, the situation of these children can be greatly improved and it’s even possible they will become top students,” the article said.
Zhu Daqian, director of the hospital’s psychology department and in charge of the service, said about one-third of the children they treat for learning difficulties have mental health disorders like depression and anxiety.
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She said this group of patients is even more highly represented among secondary school students, with many losing interest in their studies and experiencing conflict with parents and teachers.
“For this group of children with mental health problems, we will provide comprehensive treatment,” Zhu said. “We will motivate the children’s families and schools to give them psychological support and to work with our professional drug and psychological treatments.”
The hospital’s learning difficulties programme has become a popular topic of discussion on mainland Chinese social media.
“If there was such a kind of treatment during my childhood, I would not have had low scores in my studies and possibly would have become an ‘academic king’,” wrote one person on WeChat.
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Another asked: “Do you think I, in my 20s, can go to see the doctor there for learning difficulties?”
“I wonder if there is a treatment for people with difficulties in their work?” a third person questioned.
The Shanghai hospital is not the only mainstream health organisation in China to deal with learning difficulties. Some other hospitals and paediatric institutions across the mainland are also offering similar treatments.
Changzhou Municipal No. 1 People’s Hospital in Jiangsu, eastern China, is another hospital running a similar service.
“We often remind parents to adjust their mindset in order to reduce their anxiety and their children’s anxiety,” Wang Suhong, a psychiatrist from the hospital, told Jiangsu TV earlier this year.
