Harry Yi-Jui Wu
I am a historian of medicine. I was trained in medicine in Taiwan before obtaining DPhil in modern history at the University of Oxford in 2012. My current research projects mainly focus on the transnational histories of mental health. My first book, Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization, was published by MIT Press in 2021. Besides historical research, I am also interested in commenting and critiquing humanities pedagogy in medical education.
While at Oxford, I was Clifford Norton student in the History of Science at The Queen’s College. Before becoming Associate Professor at National Cheng Kung University, I taught at Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong between 2013 and 2021, where I was lead medical humanities programmes of two schools of medicine. In 2020, I was elected Early Career Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of Humanities.
I am currently Co-Editor of the Journal of Social History of Medicine. In addition, I am also on the board of Taiwanese Journal for Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine. Follow my Twitter: @HarryYJWu
While at Oxford, I was Clifford Norton student in the History of Science at The Queen’s College. Before becoming Associate Professor at National Cheng Kung University, I taught at Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong between 2013 and 2021, where I was lead medical humanities programmes of two schools of medicine. In 2020, I was elected Early Career Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of Humanities.
I am currently Co-Editor of the Journal of Social History of Medicine. In addition, I am also on the board of Taiwanese Journal for Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine. Follow my Twitter: @HarryYJWu
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Examining the interactions between the WHO and developing countries, Wu offers an analysis of the “transnationality” of mental health. He examines knowledge-sharing between the organization and African and Latin American collaborators, and looks in detail at the WHO's selection of a Taiwanese scientist, Tsung-yi Lin, to be its medical officer and head of the social psychiatry project. He discusses scientists' pursuit of standardization—not only to synchronize sectors in the organization but also to produce a common language of psychiatry—and how technological advances supported this. Wu considers why the optimism and idealism of the social psychiatry project turned to dissatisfaction, reappraising the WHO's early knowledge production modality through the concept of an “export processing zone.” Finally, he looks at the WHO's project in light of current debates over psychiatry and global mental health, as scientists shift their concerns from the creation of universal metrics to the importance of local matrixes.
Papers
Examining the interactions between the WHO and developing countries, Wu offers an analysis of the “transnationality” of mental health. He examines knowledge-sharing between the organization and African and Latin American collaborators, and looks in detail at the WHO's selection of a Taiwanese scientist, Tsung-yi Lin, to be its medical officer and head of the social psychiatry project. He discusses scientists' pursuit of standardization—not only to synchronize sectors in the organization but also to produce a common language of psychiatry—and how technological advances supported this. Wu considers why the optimism and idealism of the social psychiatry project turned to dissatisfaction, reappraising the WHO's early knowledge production modality through the concept of an “export processing zone.” Finally, he looks at the WHO's project in light of current debates over psychiatry and global mental health, as scientists shift their concerns from the creation of universal metrics to the importance of local matrixes.
After more than two decades of painstaking legislation process, on 1st of May, 2013, the Mental Health Law was finally administrated in China. The adoption of such law is hoped not only to adjust the potential political abuse of psychiatry, but also to popularise community mental health services, regulate professional and disciplinary functions of psychiatric science, and provide legal grounds for appropriate psychiatric treatments. The new Mental Health Law represents the state’s legal intervention into various misuse of psychiatry. It, however, did not stop public defenders and other human rights activists from concerning patients or normal individuals’ rights and the legal execution force of the new law. Based on historical analysis and my fieldwork in Shenzhen, this paper seeks to provide a thick reading into shifting identities and attitudes toward mental health reform in China among victims of psychiatric abuse, public defenders, mental health professionals and human rights activists, and how they are related to the reform of mental health in China.
Paper will be presented at the "Shifting Identities in China" conference.
As stated by the distinguished political scientist, Yu Keping, ‘[Psychiatric patients] deserve humanitarian treatment; but they don’t have human rights,’ modern psychiatry in China remains a grey area situated among disjunctive acceleration of social, cultural, medical and legal modernities and prone to manipulation. In this presentation, I set out agenda based on my pilot field work in Shenzhen, commenting on bei jingshenbing from socio-historical, medical and legal perspectives. I argue that the rapid spread of this neologism and the presentation of the Mental Health Law immediately following suggest the complexity and urgency of mental health reform in China. This is not to say that China must catch up, and align itself, with the so-called universal value of the humanitarian, but rather that scholars and policy makers should develop a profound, holistic understanding of the challenges faced by contemporary Chinese civil society. Aside from the national epidemiological survey already being undertaken, legalisation is only the first of many steps in the long process towards developing a robust mental health system in China.