Richmond psychiatrist invited to China

Dr. Carolyn Steinberg recently spent two weeks in China after being invited to teach and present on child mental health topics to pediatricians in Beijing and Shanghai.

Dr. Steinberg, a child psychiatrist, at the Richmond Child Health Clinic in Richmond Hospital, presented a paper on early childhood psychological development at a The Shanghai Developmental Behavioural Pediatrics Training Session; gave a case presentation one evening to staff of Shanghai Jiao Tong School of Medicine and Xinhua Hospital; demonstrated an assessment of a case of phobias in a 3 year old child to the Department of Developmental Pediatrics at Mothers and Children’s Hospital in Nanjing; and presented a paper on Assessment and Treatment of Early Childhood Behaviour Problems to 300 pediatricians at the Wuxi Developmental Pediatric Conference.

“The teaching experience was really heartwarming. There was such warmth and a very high level of interest in our experiences. You had 300 professionals glued on your every word, wanting to stay connected. The warmth and hospitality was beyond anything I’ve experienced before,” says Carolyn.

“I really felt enveloped in the groups I participated in, and it was a great introduction to the professional groups.

After a group of developmental pediatricians visited Richmond Hospital last fall to learn about Western approaches to mental illness in children, they invited Carolyn travel to China to participate in the upcoming teaching and training activities.

“There are very few child psychologists in China,” says Carolyn. “For a population of about 1 billion, there are less than 200 child psychologists. So pediatricans deal with emotional and behavioural problems of young children even though they would not have the same psychiatric stream of training as a child psychiatrist would have here. During their recent visit to Richmond Hospital, they were very interested in the concepts of Early Childhood psychological development and the current use of dyadic and family work to help families of young children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

She says she made several interesting observations that will help her when working with her Chinese patients.

“We don’t tend to work in the same kind of work groups or in strong intergenerational family systems. We tend to be individuals and when children come of age they’re eager to move out, whereas families in Asia live in a trans-generational home. I’ll definitely be looking more carefully at this, and it will make me more sensitive to what an enormous impact it may be when Chinese immigrants are away from their family group.

One of the hospitals Carolyn visited, Nanjing Mothers and Children’s Hospital, performs 20,000 deliveries per year and has an active developmental pediatric department. They’re interested in starting up a clinic similar to the one at Richmond Hospital. They also would like to send a pediatrician to Richmond to train with Carolyn, and have already asked her to return to China for more teaching, training and information sharing.