Mental health under lockdown: A clinical psychologist in Shanghai
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser welcomes back Dr. George Hu, a clinical psychologist based in Shanghai, who has a lot to say about the state of mental health in Chinese cities under lockdown. Unsurprisingly, mental health disorders like anxiety and depression have been exacerbated under conditions of isolation and food insecurity. Surprisingly, there's a silver lining or two to the whole thing.
6:52 – Getting a sense for the scale of mental health problems related to the lockdown in Shanghai
16:23 – Have the lockdowns increased awareness of and empathy for people suffering from mental health disorders in Shanghai and in China?
20:07 – The lockdowns and impact on children and on the elderly
34:05 – The impact on essential workers
42:21 – What other Chinese cities are learning from Shanghai's COVID-19 experience
45:22 – The quarantine centers and mental health services
A full transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
George: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid For Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims
Kaiser: Nicholas Confessore's series in the New York Times on Tucker Carlson, "American Nationalist"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:14.9 | Subscribe to SubChina's daily, newly designed China Access Newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from hundreds |
| 0:21.9 | of different news sources. Or check out all the original writing on our website at subchina.com. |
| 0:27.7 | We've got reported stories, essays, and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, |
| 0:33.2 | and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations |
| 0:39.1 | to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples |
| 0:44.0 | in China's Xinjiang region to China's travails as it wrestles with a surging wave of COVID-19, |
| 0:50.9 | and that's actually what we're going to be talking about today. It's a feast of business, |
| 0:54.5 | political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with |
| 0:59.3 | neither fear nor favor. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. |
| 1:05.0 | Listeners to the show might recall an episode that Jeremy and I taped back in November of last |
| 1:09.1 | year with a Shanghai-based clinical psychologist named George Hu. I really enjoyed that Jeremy and I taped back in November of last year with a Shanghai-based clinical psychologist |
| 1:12.1 | named George Hu. I really enjoyed that, and apparently many of you listeners did too to judge |
| 1:17.0 | from some of the very kind emails we got after that show dropped. Well, as you are all doubtless aware, |
| 1:22.7 | a lot has changed in Shanghai since we spoke six months ago. Shanghai has had to endure one of the longest, strictest, and least competently administered |
| 1:31.7 | lockdowns that China has faced since the initial outbreak of COVID in Wuhan in late 2019. |
| 1:37.2 | It would be surprising if that ordeal hadn't made an impact on the mental health of Shanghai |
| 1:42.7 | residents. |
| 1:43.9 | And I should hasten to add that |
| 1:45.1 | Shanghai isn't the only Chinese city to experience lockdown since the current wave of Omicron |
| 1:49.7 | has started spreading in China. Over 40 cities in China as of May 10th were in either full or |
| 1:56.1 | partial lockdown or had implemented some kind of district control measures, this according to my colleague |
... |
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