During on-line conversations with members of the public, Zhu Rongxian, deputy of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said 16 million Chinese belong to the “melancholia” group. She put them into three groups – the aged living in endless loneliness, young people tortured by heavy pressure from work or school, and married people constantly in fear of their partners straying.
There are too few psychologists in China to deal with these broken hearts and pining minds. One expert speaking at the Third Annual Meeting of Psychiatry and Psychological Consulting in the United States said there were 550 psychologists and psychiatrists to 1 million people in the USA – yet in China, there were no more than five.