Opportunities and challenges for promoting psychotherapy in contemporary China

China’s first mental health law, which went into effect last year, envisages a world in which psychotherapy is an integral part of all levels of medical care. There are many obstacles to achieving this goal. The new law empowers psychiatrists to provide psychotherapy but few of them have the time or inclination to do so because of the lower incomes generated by non-biological treatments. Trained clinical psychologists are in very short supply partly because of the lack of supervised training opportunities and partly because the current medical system – and the new mental health law – does not empower them to diagnose or treat patients without the direct supervision of a physician. Achieving the laudable goals of the new law will require substantial changes in the regulations and, perhaps more importantly, in attitudes about the role and status of psychologists within the medical care delivery system.