Psychological symptoms among Chinese in urban Hong Kong

Abstract

Clinical observations on Chinese mental patients suggested that somatization was a common mode of symptom presentation. One explanation attributed to the phenomenon was that Chinese tend to suppress or deny their feelings. The present study took the data on the 22-item Langner Scale collected as part of the Hong Kong Biosocial Survey and reanalyzed the responses of 3925 Chinese subjects in terms of Crandell and Dohrenwend's subscales. Results showed that among these urban Chinese, report of psychological symptoms on the Langner Scale was higher than that of psychophysiological, physiological and ambiguous symptoms. Significant differences in subscale scores were found among five subject variables: age, sex, education, socioeconomic status and total number of reported symptoms. Within each subgroup of the subject variables, scores on the psychological subscale was significantly higher than scores on the other three subscales. These findings disputed the contention that Chinese in general tend to deny their emotions. Somatization among Chinese mental patients in medical settings and report of psychological symptoms by Chinese may not be mutually exclusive phenomena. A more meaningful examination of the somatization concept should include investigation of the conceptualization of mental illness among Chinese, the channels chosen for help and symptom presentation in different settings.