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Suicides in a mega-size factory in China: poor mental health among young migrant workers in China
  1. Joseph T F Lau1,2,
  2. Yu Cheng2,
  3. Jing Gu3,
  4. Runan Zhou2,
  5. Chengpu Yu2,
  6. Eleanor Holroyd4,
  7. Nelson C Y Yeung5
  1. 1Centre for Health Behaviors Research, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
  2. 2Centre for Medical Anthropology and Behavioral Health, School of Sociology and Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
  3. 3School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
  4. 4Division of Nursing and Midwifery, School of Health Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
  5. 5Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Texas, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Yu Cheng, Centre for Medical Anthropology and Behavioral Health, School of Sociology and Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, 135, Xingang West Road, Guangzhou 510275, P.R. China; chengyu{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn

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Ten successful suicides and two unsuccessful attempts resulting in severe injuries occurred between January and May 2010 in a factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, which hires over 430 000 workers.1 The tragedy was an alarm for the poor mental health of the billions of Chinese workers migrating from rural areas to work in prosperous coastal cities (Nongmingong 农民工). In Guangdong, there are 25 million migrant workers, of whom over 30% work in factories and the majority are below 25 years old.2 Unlike most of the older workers who would like to return to their hometowns eventually, most of these second-generation younger migrant workers would …

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  • Competing interests None.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.