‘Filial piety is the foundation’: A qualitative study of psychological distress and wellbeing in a cohort of Chinese clinical psychology students

Abstract

The paper presents a detailed idiographic analysis of Chinese clinical psychology students’ lived experiences and understandings of their psychological health, distress and wellbeing. This is a qualitative, experience-near interview study using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with an interpreter with eleven students who had begun their clinical placements in Bejing, China. There were ten females and one male. The interviews were audio-recorded and the transcripts subjected to IPA. Conflict of tradition and modernity was a major theme in the participants’ accounts of their psychological wellbeing. This comprised four subthemes: 1. Strict pragmatism in the family; 2. Emotion moderation; 3. Coordinating individual and relational selves; and 4. Conflict of gender inequality. Participants’ attempts to reconcile cultural tradition with postmodern, urbanised perspectives was a source of psychological malaise. We discuss the findings in terms of indigenous psychology and cultural modifications of psychotherapy for Chinese clients. The study suggests a role for phenomenological approaches especially attuned to the encounter with otherness.