A Brief History of the Development of Rehabilitative Services in China

Abstract

In pre-revolutionary China most disabled persons had no opportunity to receive education or obtain employment, and many of them experienced social discrimination. After the founding of the People's Republic, the government adopted a number of measures aimed at guaranteeing their livelihood. Efforts were made to give those who maintained the ability to work the opportunity to do so; those who were unable to work were provided with emergency relief or, if they had no family members who could support them, placed in orphanages, long-term psychiatric hospitals, and other types of welfare institution. Once the basic livelihood needs of the disabled were met, the next objective was to provide rehabilitative services. The evolution of these services has depended on three separate but related developments: the maturation of an organisational structure for the co-ordination of the services; the promulgation of laws that safeguard the rights and privileges of disabled persons; and the formation of academic societies of medical rehabilitation. This paper first considers these three developments and then examines how they have influenced the evolution of psychiatric rehabilitation in China.