Phillips has been working for a year and a half with Yang Gonghuan of the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine in an effort to find out. Those deaths seem related to a breakdown in the country's health-care system and the rising cost of medical treatment. Rather than burden their families with expenses and worry, the old folks decide to end it. The Chinese government is becoming increasingly open about the suicide problem but has not yet done much to solve it. The mental-health system is geared toward treating severe disorders like schizophrenia.
Funds are short, so there is only limited research on the causes of suicide.
Because of low salaries and high stress, few doctors choose to go into the mental-health field. That means severely depressed patients, especially those outside the big cities, often go without treatment. Yet such conditions prevail in developing countries that have far fewer suicides. China's high rate can't be fully explained by poverty, poor public health or the low status of women either, because many other parts of the world suffer from those problems too. Indeed, China has enjoyed high economic growth for years, and so far it has largely escaped the financial woes that have hit its Asian neighbors.