Hsuan-Ying Huang is a medical anthropologist with a geographical focus on China and prior training in psychiatry and psychotherapy. Prior to studying medical anthropology at Harvard University, he received medical education and psychiatric training at the National Taiwan University.
For nearly a decade, he has been studying the rise of Western-style psychotherapy in urban China, a trend known as the “psycho-boom” (xinli re). His research explores how this evolution—in both its professional and popular aspects—has taken shape under the confluence of technical, moral, and politico-economic forces; it also examines how individual and interpersonal experiences related to psychotherapy reflect its developments, as well as broader cultural and societal shifts. Recently, he has begun to extend his research attention to the rise of digital mental health in China.