CHAPTER 6 - Traditional Chinese Beliefs and Attitudes toward Mental Illness

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the origins of traditional Chinese beliefs and attitudes about mental disorders and reviews the ancient records, traditional medical books, and popular literary writings. In the Chinese language, the general description of mentally disordered behavior is kuang. This character is composed of two parts. The left radical resembles a dog, and the right radical is an ancient character called huang, signifying flourishing grass and herbage. The latter indicates that a dog bites fiercely and indiscriminatingly. This interpretation suggests that the Chinese idea of madness is derived from the rabies of dogs. There is no evidence to prove that the earliest etiological explanation for mental illness was attributed to rabies, though the prevalence of rabies was no doubt one of the major concerns at that time. A review of the development of psychiatric concepts in traditional Chinese medicine indicates that the diagnostic classification and terminology suffered from lack of precision and theoretical systematization.