Mental Illness Among Formosan Aborigines As Compared with the Chinese in Taiwan

Following the socio-psychiatric surveys on the Chinese population in three communities from 1946 to 1948 (Lin, 1953), similar studies were carried out in Taiwan (Formosa) from 1949 to 1953 on four aboriginal tribes. The purpose of these studies was to investigate the characteristic features of mental disorders among the aborigines and the relationship of the occurrence of mental illness to their differential levels of social development. The present paper reports the main results of the comparative psychiatric surveys on 11,442 aborigines distributed among tribal groups of different levels of acculturation.