The society should pay more attention to the mental health of children, said Jiang Bixia and Shao Qing, deputies to the 7th Zhoushan Municipal People's Congress.

According to Jiang, children and teenagers have faced increasingly more mental problems in recent years, and these problems have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic as they have spent more time playing electronic games instead of communicating with other people face to face.

She noted that in 2020, the number of adolescent patients at the Second Hospital of Zhoushan for mental health increased 240 percent over the previous year.

The Zhoushan Women and Children Hospital handled more than 600 cases involving children aged 4 to 10 with mental health issues in the same year, added Shao.

Jiang suggested that psychology experts of medical institutions should be invited to work as parttime teachers at schools to help solve the mental health problems faced by students or to conduct lectures on mental health at regular intervals.

Meanwhile, fulltime psychology teachers at schools should receive further education at mental health institutes, Jiang said.

Shao proposed setting up community-based psychological service organizations. She suggested that municipal government release measures to support social psychological service organizations and cultivate professionals in community work.