No abstract

The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications for Chinese students studying abroad.

The development and initial validation of a 17-item Acculturative Hassles Scale for Chinese Students (AHSCS) is described. Items were generated by in-depth interview, selected by item analysis, and validated in a sample of 400 Chinese mainland students in Hong Kong. Factor analysis suggested four factors with 17 items: Language Deficiency, Academic Work, Cultural Difference, and Social Interaction. Scores in this study showed satisfactory internal consistency reliability for the AHSCS and its four subscales. The AHSCS score shows a statistically significant positive correlation with negative affect and significant negative correlations with positive affect and life satisfaction. These results suggest that the AHSCS appears to be a reliable and valid instrument to measure acculturative stressors within a Chinese student population. However, further validation of the scale is still needed.

No abstract

In China, there are over 170 million people suffering from mental illness. However, there is a lack of a critical review of the policies governing the provision of mental health services. Drawing on the framework of mental health policy developed by the WHO, this article critically examines mental health policies regarding legislation, financing, model of care and delivery, as well as manpower and the training of mental health professionals in China. This analysis raises a number of policy‐related questions concerning the lack of community‐based psychiatric services, inadequate coverage of mental health services in the rural areas, poor standard of education and an insufficient number of trained mental health professionals, and insufficient protection of the human rights of people with mental illness. The article ends by urging the various levels of governments to make a firm commitment to improve mental health care for people with mental illness in China.

Objective: The objective of this study is to develop and validate the Chinese Making Sense of Adversity Scale (CMSAS) to measure the cognitive coping strategies that Chinese people adopt to make sense of adversity. Method: A 12-item CMSAS was developed by in-depth interview and item analysis. The scale was validated with a sample of 627 Chinese international students in Australia and Mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong. Results: Exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: making positive sense and making negative sense of adversity. The CMSAS exhibited high internal consistency reliability and good concurrent validity. Conclusion: The CMSAS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring the coping strategies used by Chinese people to make sense of adversity. However, further validation of the scale is needed.

Objectives: The concept of recovery has begun shifting mental health service delivery from a medical perspective toward a clientcentered recovery orientation. This shift is also beginning in Hong Kong, but its development is hampered by a dearth of available measures in Chinese. Method: This article translates two measures of recovery (mental health recovery measure and the recovery subscale of peer outcomes protocol) and one measure of recovery-promoting environments (recovery self-assessment) into Chinese and investigates their psychometric properties among 206 Hong Kong Chinese people with severe mental illness. Result: Multifactor solutions from earlier studies were not replicated; our evidence pointed to one-factor solutions. Since all recovery measures demonstrated high internal consistency reliability (.92 to .96), we analyzed total scale scores. Conclusion: Moderately high correlations among the recovery measures (.33 to .56) provide some support for construct validity, yet further investigation of recovery measures in a Chinese population is needed. Keywords schizophrenia, mental health recovery, scale validation, Hong Kong ChineseAn accumulation of historical evidence over the past century has begun to moderate the previously bleak prognosis for individuals with severe mental illnesses, particularly for those with schizophrenia (Frese, Knight, & Saks, 2009). Long-term studies of schizophrenia patients have consistently found higher than expected rates of functional (50-59%) and full recovery (22-26%) in follow-up periods of 20 or more years (Bleuler, 1978;Ciompi, 1980;Huber, Gross, Schuttler, & Linz, 1980) suggesting the negative prognosis routinely associated with schizophrenia is frequently incorrect (Hopper, Harrison, Janca, & Sartorius, 2007).Early in this century in the United States, the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report (2002) critiqued a fragmented mental health system based on a disease model that ''simply manages symptoms and accepts long-term disability'' (p. 1). The Commission posed a challenge to fundamentally transform mental health care in the United States to ''ensure that mental health services and supports actively facilitate recovery, and build resilience to face life's challenges'' (p. 1). This shift in the orientation of mental health services from managing long-term disability and toward promoting recovery has resonated in many parts of the

This paper introduces a new research area in positive psychology -resilience. Two groups of definition of resilience and two generations of resilience research are described. Two critical components of resilience are analyzed and resilience studies in Asian societies are reviewed. Finally, the implications of the application of the concept and direction for future resilience research are proposed.