Study On Mental Health Status And Its Determinants In Rural China

Health is the most precious wealth of the world, it is the premise of existence and development in the society, and it is also the basic right of human. The definition of health made by World Health Organization (WHO) is: "Health means not only no disease or weak, but also a good state of body, mental and society". So to say, health is the person's body, spirit and mental state well cooperated with the natural and social states. The cognition of health has already been from pure biology mode to the biology-mental-society medicine mode. The study of presently all hint that the evaluation of health should be from the physiology, mental state and social factor and so on. Then the result will be more overall. Health not only means a body without weakness, but also should include mental health.Mental health means that the individual lived in the certain social circumstance, under the situation of high level nerve function and intelligence be normal, have the stable emotion,the proper behavior,the ability of harmonizing with each other and adapting the environment, and the best function situation of mental state in the permission of oneself and the environment condition.We used self-designed questionnaire about health state and some mental health related scale to conduct a comprehensive investigation and measurement on the mental health of rural residents in Shandong Province,Anhui Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China. The sample was randomly chosen by using cluster-based sampling method and including 1161 rural residents aged 15 and above. All the data were coordinated by institute of social medicine and health management, Shandong University. Then we can organize personnel to put the data into computer after checking. SPSS 13.0 software package was used for statistical analysis. Frequency distribution,rate and composition and some other methods were used for descriptive analysis. X~2 test,rank correlation analysis and Logistic regression and so on were used for statistical test.The survey mainly covers: 1. The general information about the investigated family; 2. The socio-demographic characteristics of the family members aged 15 and above, such as gender, age, marital status, educational level, occupation and so on; 3. The perceived health state, health status objective and the type of character and some other factors of the family members aged 15 and above; 4. The mental health state of the family members aged 15 and above.The main results: 1. About 61.9 percent rural residents in China at a good state of mental health, including 65.6 percent male residents and 58.7 percent for women; there was no significant difference about mental health among residents of different sex; 2. The elderly and the divorced / widowed had poor mental health; 3. The mental health state of residents were different to different level of education; to different income levels, the mental health of the residents were also different; 4. The mental health status of rural residents was according to their body objective healtlth,perceived health state and life satisfaction; 5. The mental health state of outward personality self-assessment was better than the diffidence; The mental health of the people whose life is monotonous or negative were worse than the absence of such factors.Conclusions and suggestions: 1. To develop the economy for increasing the income levels of rural residents; 2. Attach importance to mental health research and strengthen the mental health care; 3. Actively develop a variety of spiritual and cultural life of rural residents; 4. To strengthen the mental health education, and guide rural residents to form a healthy outlook on life and values so as to enhance the health of rural residents and improve their quality of life.