Acknowledging a rise in its national suicide rate, China will introduce an anti-depression mobile app within the next three years. Beijing kicked off development of the app to curb the number of suicides in the country said the Beijing News on September 10, which is World Suicide Prevention Day.

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Yang Fude, director of Beijing's Huilongguan Hospital, describes how the app can take a mental assessment of users. It can monitor indices of anxiety; when a critical stage is reached, the app connects users to a doctor or even allows the user to chat with a robot to relieve stress.

China experiences about 120,000 deaths by suicide a year, although some monitors place the number at a graver 170,000. Lung disease and cancer are far and away the more prolific killers, but as recently as 2011, Chinadigitaltimes.net claimed suicide was the number one killer of young people in the Middle Kingdom.

It is thought that as China advances, the pressure to win and succeed can be so great that students snap under the pressure and commit suicide as a result, a sad phenomenon already epidemic among high school students in Japan. In Japan, as in China, the stigma of mental conditions can create a vicious cycle where the sufferer, already depressed, becomes even more so because of the associated shame.

The recent deaths of American comedian Robin Williams and famed Chinese translator Sun Zhongxu put depression firmly in the world spotlight, but mental health is only now becoming part of the public discussion in China, where clinical depression often goes by unnoticed. Many doctors do not have the professional wherewithal to identify it, nor do they have access to the therapies and remedies to combat it.

It is estimated only 21 percent of Chinese depression sufferers get diagnosed, well below the world average of 55.65 percent. Only 10 percent of Chinese patients get treated.

Launching the app could help raise awareness and facilitate mental health treatment, Yang said.

Tagsmobile app, Robin Williams, Sun Zhongxu