The recent carnival in Shanghai's Pudong District proved to be another success for the thrill-providing entertainment industry that sets out to challenge human limitations.

Sitting on those strange fun rides which turn your body upside down or strand you in the air like a clumsy bird is an experience that has drawn many people in this hot season. People do seem to have fun but they also vomit or suffer from sun-stroke.

Despite all the paid-pain, people relish the thrills and screams, which are an indispensable course of the modern-day diet.

What is behind all the screams and excitement then? Of course, there is the innate and ever-present human curiosity and the desire for stimuli. But also at work is the quest for an emotional outlet to "vomit up" negative and antagonistic feelings that have been smouldering in us for the past few months.

But there are many more who have not gone to the carnival or who have failed to find such emotional outlets. Some are not driving the dodgem cars at the carnival but are driving buses on the streets in Shanghai. Recent reports of road accidents climb as high as the temperatures in Shanghai.

The increase is partly attributed to people's short-tempers caused by the sizzling weather in Shanghai over the past several weeks.

But hot weather can not cover the real problem.

Statistics from the Shanghai Mental Health Centre show a substantial increase in the number of mental patients in the city since the 1980s with more than 200,000 cases of severe mental illness and more than 50,0000 cases of psychological disorders.

Chinese people used to be shy about speaking out about their psychological worries. Now it is good that we have finally begun to face the problem. Psychological difficulties are just like physical ones that need treatment.

However, technical treatment (like "scream therapy") alone is not enough. Medicines are important. But the ultimate cures lie in people - doctors (we need mental health doctors not only because they prescribe but also because they listen and talk), friends, our loved ones and ourselves.

Express feelings, help people and be helped, steel our spirits, brave life's elements, change negative values, accept limitations and differences, recognize that we are imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world - these are all good medicine and good food though, perhaps, easier said than done.

starcomment@yahoo.com