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XUDONG
ZHAO, M.D., Ph.D.
TP Section Committee member, 2005-2008
China
I was born in 1962 in
Guiyang, a southwestern city in China, and grew up in Yunnan Province,
where 25 minority nationalities live together with the Han Chinese
majority population. My pathway toward becoming a psychiatrist has been
full of unexpected turns and
twists in a rapidly and radically changing society; but growing up in
the ethnically diverse place I did might be the first pre-determining
factor for my career as a psychiatrist who is interested in cultural
issues.
I started as a
medical student at Kunming Medical College in 1978, when I was 16,
having passed the first national examination for universities after the
end of the "Cultural Revolution". At that time, most young
people wanted to study the "hard sciences". But the medical
curriculum in the first two years was boring for me. The only exceptions
were courses in English and the 2-hour introduction to medical
psychology, taught by a philosophy teacher. I immediately became
intrigued with the idea that I should become a "psychological
doctor". However, I found out, to my disappointment, that it was
impossible to find literature in this field and that there was no such
specialty at all in China, unless I became a physician specializing in
psychiatry; an occupation that seemed frightening to most medical
students at that time. Some of my classmates laughed at me because of my
‘crazy’ idea of wanting a career in psychiatry.
Fortunately for me,
and my aspirations of becoming a psychiatrist, I met my first mentor,
Prof Wenpeng Wan, the pioneer of cultural psychiatry in China. I
answered his question about my motivation to become a psychiatrist by
saying: "I’d like to learn about why the people struggle against
each other and why they are so unhappy. I’d like to do something to
make them happier." Then he told me, to my surprise, that my major
task should be to learn English, because we Chinese needed to use
conceptual frameworks developed in other countries to observe and study
ourselves. In 1983, when I was 21, I started my psychiatry training; as
a resident in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the 1st Affiliated
Hospital of Kunming Medical College.
In 1985, I was
enrolled as a post-graduate student for a master’s degree at the West
China University in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. There, my second mentor,
Prof Motao encouraged me, as the first post-graduate student to study
cross-cultural psychiatry, in light of my upbringing in multiethnic
Yunnan Province. I completed my first research project on life stress
and its impact on the mental health status of the Yi-nationality in
Liangshan District, Sichuan Province. It was one of the first surveys
dealing with the mental health problems of Chinese ethnic groups in the
context of socio-cultural changes in China. Such social changes had been
exclusively defined as positive progress for the minority nationalities
before. In my thesis, the adaptation problems and drinking behavior of
the Yi people in newly formed urban centers were discussed as key
issues.
My first face-to-face
transcultural encounter with foreign colleagues took place in 1988 in
Kunming, when two German professors, Helm Stierlin and Fritz Simon,
introduced systemic family therapy to China for the first time, at a
symposium. I was fascinated by their description of this approach.
Although all the participants were confused by the innovative ideas and
techniques at the beginning of the symposium, I was pleased to notice
that this kind of Western psychotherapy was clearly applicable to
Chinese cultures. For example, I automatically associated systemic
thinking embodied in family therapy with Taoism and Zen Buddhism.
But again, language
became a barrier to pursuing my intense interest in the German school of
psychotherapy. After the symposium, I began to learn German as my second
foreign language. Learning foreign languages has been an essential part
of my growth process and my professional career. It still is.
From 1990 to 1993, I
studied family therapy as a doctoral candidate of Prof Stierlin at
Heidelberg University. I was also the first Chinese psychiatrist from
‘mainland’ China to be sent to Europe to study psychotherapy. The
time I spent in Heidelberg has taught me a great deal. I experienced
bitter "cultural shock" there and strived for better
adaptation to a totally strange culture through my own efforts, although
my German colleagues and my sponsor, the Hamburg Foundation for the
Promotion of Culture and Sciences, treated me very well. I learned from
my own acculturative stress experiences, that culture is something
substantial and irreplaceable.
Due to my preference
to study cultural issues, I chose to write my dissertation on
"Introduction of systemic family therapy into China as a cultural
project" ( in German ). My thesis was awarded the distinction
"magna cum laude" by the examination committee in 1993, and
published as a book, in Berlin, in 2002. In this dissertation, I
compared German and Chinese families and tried to describe Chinese
families within the framework of family dynamics. I concluded that there
were many similarities between families in Germany and China, and that
systemic family therapy could be applied in the Chinese clinical
setting, even though there was need to modify it and develop it in
practical ways. Since my return to China in 1993, I’ve been trying to
practice systemic family therapy and German psychosomatics in a general
hospital setting. It seems that they work very well for Chinese
patients.
I’ve been working
actively in cross-cultural training programs since the 1990s. Some
German and Chinese colleagues organized the German-Chinese Academy for
Psychotherapy in 1996, and I am the coordinator and chairman on the
Chinese side. Through our efforts, psychotherapies, including
psychodynamic psychotherapy, behavior therapy, family therapy and
hypnotherapy, have taken root substantially and been recognized in
China. It has become obvious that cultural awareness is really very
important for the success of such transcultural projects.
In addition to my
clinical practice and administrative responsibilities as president of a
large general hospital in Yunnan, I still maintain my interest in the
relationship between socio-cultural change and mental health. I have
continued the longitudinal survey of one of the smallest ethnic group in
China, the Jinuo nationality in Yunnan Province, which was initiated in
1979 by my mentor and teacher, Prof Wenpeng Wan.
My family moved from
the more remote province of Yunnan to the booming metropolis of Shanghai
in 2004, where people from many countries and provinces are confronted
with coping with the rapid changes and challenges of urban
competitiveness and the pressures of globalization. From the perspective
of transcultural psychiatry, there are also many factors impacting on
mental health status due to these radical changes. The
"side-effects" of China’s booming economy have been
reflected in the daily clinical encounters between professionals and
their clients. Precisely because of the urgent need for a multi-cultural
health care center, I was assigned to be the head of a task force for
constructing the "Sino-German Friendship Hospital" which will
be an affiliated hospital of Tongji University.
Frankly, I’m
ambivalent concerning my conflicting roles as a psychiatrist and as an
administrator. I’ve been trying to integrate them, since it’s very
rare for Chinese psychiatrists to be leaders of medical institutions and
organizations. I will continue to supervise my colleagues and doctoral
candidates doing cross-cultural research, while I also continue to apply
my transcultural expertise to managing this extensive joint-venture
project. I consider it as an opportunity to spread transcultural
consciousness in medicine and management in China.
Dear colleagues, I
welcome you to visit us in Shanghai!
April 5, 2006
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