In the past few years, psychological counsellor Huang Jing has watched her business thrive.
With any other industry, that would be cause for celebration – China has made private enterprise a priority as it pushes for sustained economic recovery – but a higher demand for mental health services carries other, more troubling implications.
Huang set up her first counselling company, Better Family, in Shanghai in February 2022 – not long before the city’s notorious two-month lockdown began. Business recovered quickly when quarantine lifted in June, and her practice broke even three months later. Six months after that, she opened two more offices there.
Now, she has expanded to Hangzhou, operating three offices in the Yangtze Delta tech hub.
The rapid growth in businesses like Huang’s, lucrative though it may be, reflects a rise in conditions like anxiety and depression among the public – including the middle class, widely regarded as foundational to China’s economic growth and social progress.
“People cannot help but wonder why the Chinese economy has ground to a halt,” she said. “We’ve seen a sea change in the property market, disillusionment of young people, and, particularly, mountains of pressure from parents: To make money, save money, rigid education (standards) and dim outlooks for their children’s future.”
The World Health Organization has estimated 54 million people in China suffer from depression and 41 million suffer from anxiety disorders. In recent years, health authorities have also made attempts to address the issue.
These phenomena are motivating people to seek psychological therapy and self-help in larger numbers, leading to a tenfold increase in the number of counselling institutions from 2011 to 2020 according to data from Qcc.com, a corporate credit information provider. The number soared by more than 60 per cent year on year in 2022, reaching 30,700.
The state-run newspaper Legal Daily reported more than 160,000 companies in China had business profiles which included psychological counselling as of the end of last year.
“I studied psychology in 2001 when the market was very small”, said Huang, whose centres charge clients 600 yuan per hour or above. “Because (psychological counselling) is expensive, and ordinary wage-earning classes can’t afford it. Only the affluent can.”
She added those clients’ interests are mostly personal or familial. “Solving psychological stress is their immediate need,” she said. “Our customers are mainly from families that have encountered marriage problems and issues in child-rearing and education.”
A gap between expectations and reality could be the cause for many people who seek counselling, Huang said. “Parents of many teenagers were raised after China kicked off reform and opening-up in the 1980s, rode the crest of the economic boom and had high hopes their children would replicate their success,” she said. “(They are) deeply averse to the idea (their children could) fail to achieve their full potential in school or not land an ideal job.”
Industry insiders and scholars said the coming two years may be the peak period for anxiety among Chinese families, with previously unseen pessimism over careers and income in the bumpy post-pandemic economy driving the counselling industry’s expansion.
