Founded in 1935, Shanghai Mental Health Center was formerly known as Mercy Hospital and later Shanghai Psychiatric Hospital. Funded by the philanthropist Lu Bohong and managed by a church, it was one of the largest and best-equipped psychiatric hospitals in the Far East at the time. Today it is the only Grade 3, Class A psychiatric hospital in Shanghai and the largest mental health institution in China.

Over its 90 years the center has developed the most complete range of services and leading disciplines in the field, undertaking medical treatment, teaching, research, prevention, rehabilitation, psychological counseling and psychotherapy, and international academic exchange in mental health for the whole country. It became an affiliated hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in 2006. In 2022 it was approved as the main hospital of the National Center for Mental Disorders and as an output hospital for national regional medical centers, and it was selected as a pilot unit for the high-quality development of Shanghai public hospitals. In 2023 it was approved to prepare the National Quality Control Center for Psychiatry.

The center has two campuses, Xuhui and Minhang, covering a total of nearly 200 mu, with 1,878 approved beds and 2,141 beds actually available. In 2023 it received 1.165 million outpatient and emergency visits.

Following the concept of “people first”, the focus on public welfare and the tenet of putting patients at the center, the center works to build a “community of shared future for mental health”. It emphasizes discipline building, innovation, talent training, refined management, better services and brand building, and plays a leading role in drafting national and local mental health laws, policies and technical standards, in research on major clinical issues, and in public mental health services.

Since the national performance appraisal of tertiary public hospitals began in 2019, the center has ranked at the top among psychiatric hospitals in China, and it has been among the top 100 hospitals in the Fudan China Hospital Ranking for 13 consecutive years. In the Fudan ranking for 2023 it is placed in the A tier.

Through the National Center for Mental Disorders and the National Quality Control Center for Psychiatry, the center aims to play an exemplary and leading role in seven areas: the diagnosis and treatment of difficult and critical mental illnesses, breakthroughs in key technologies of psychiatric science, high-level medical research and its translation, responses to major public mental health issues, the training of high-level medical talent, international and domestic exchange and cooperation, and the integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine.

Its mission is to provide scientific, impeccable and humanistic mental health services to improve the quality of life.

Our Value: Solidarity, Commitment, Diligence, Innovation

Cover photo by N509FZ, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.