Background Blog: Confusionism

I thought about doing this project back in January. I've been living in China and knew I'd have some time back in Britain in July. It'd be lovely to laze around for a month and catch up with old friends and try new ales but something was niggling my mind.

The first time I came to China I was on Citalopram, to help with my anxiety. I hadn't been able to get a decent supply of pills before coming and even talking about having mental health problems would have meant losing my visa and my job. I weaned myself off as best as I could but in truth, I still wasn't managing my health well enough.

This time around I came here in a much better condition and finally had a VPN (the program that let's you tunnel through the great firewall of China) to access facebook. The official view of mental illness hasn't changed much in 3 years. Living in a bigger city with more to do I actually pick up on more negative attitudes towards it. One unexpected example was the sign at the new geology visitor centre; it expressly forbids entrance to dogs, drunks and people suffering mental confusion. Certainly puts me in mind of prejudices from another time in Western history.

People don't talk about mental health in China because it is a sign of weakness and because it could lead to losing their jobs. I'd like to think that in Britain we are able to talk about it freely, but do we?