From my understanding of the lengthy experience of many inpatients with mental illness from the onset of illness to hospitalization, these patients and their parents go through three stages or processes from the onset of illness to hospitalization, which I refer to as the “trilogy. Because the parents of most patients grow up with an underlying psychological background of insecurity, i.e., a belief that society has too many risk factors or temptations that may endanger the healthy development of their children, they tend to be overprotective and tightly control their children’s behavior, limiting their children’s understanding and exploration of the vast unknown. As a result of this pattern of behavior by parents and other elders, their children develop a greater or lesser degree of psychological insecurity (what used to be called “neurotic” traits) based on a lack of understanding of the objective world, such as excessive fear that factors that do not pose a threat to them may threaten their safety, and excessive attention to these factors. These factors are often judged as causing anxiety, stress, fear, pessimism, and other negative emotions with their own limited cognitive level. This pattern of reactions is the psychological basis for the formation and development of most mental disorders. Different forms of mental disorders may emerge when patients experience mental stimuli or stresses that are difficult for them to bear during their growth. After the onset of some relatively typical mental abnormalities, most parents of patients review their own educational failures, but often make the wrong attribution, i.e., they believe that the main cause of the illness is excessive external stress, without recognizing the decisive role of their own overprotection of their children in the onset of the illness. Even those parents who recognize the role of their overprotection of their children in the onset of the disease may not realize the seriousness of the problem and still consider the unfavorable factors in the external environment as the key factors in the onset of the disease. On the basis of such an attributional judgment, the most likely response of the patient’s parents is to revise their own educational model, believing that their previous overly strict demands on their children may have had a negative impact on the patient’s illness, and to begin to make overkill concessions, or even to take measures that are diametrically opposed to their previous demands and to condone certain behavioral and emotional reactions of their children. At the same time, the patient’s parents take extra care to avoid exposing their children to anything that could become a mental stimulus, and they make their own judgments as to whether something constitutes a so-called mental stimulus for their children. Although this can sometimes lead to a brief period of peace and compromise, the patient learns to use his or her illness to gain greater benefit in the process, and even though he or she sometimes recognizes that some of his or her actions are “robbery” in nature, he or she will not hesitate to do so as long as he or she wishes to gain actual benefit. The pattern of behavior has the danger of “quenching the thirst”. At this point, the parents are often torn between the desire to uphold their own educational principles and the painful need to accommodate their child’s behavior, but they seem to have no choice but to go along with the reality of prioritizing immediate interests. At this stage, the relationship between the parent and child changes in an uncanny way: the roles are switched, with the parent taking the child’s lead and the child learning to control and dictate to the parent. If the patient’s condition worsens to the point where he or she has to go to a psychiatrist, the parents are still accustomed to looking at their child’s face, and they hesitate to do so, even in the case of a visit to a psychiatrist. For one thing, parents do not want to expose their children to the “vicious stimuli” of psychiatrists and the psychiatric hospital environment; for another, they fear that if the patient is confirmed to be mentally ill, they will not be able to cope with the resulting internal pain; and for another, they are afraid to take strong measures to force reluctant patients to seek medical care. All these concerns lead parents to try to replace the patient’s idea and practice of consulting a “psychiatrist” or psychiatrist at the hospital, or looking up some relevant information on the Internet to make a diagnosis. Parents of patients are reluctant to take their patients to a specialist hospital until they have no other choice or are at the end of their rope. But the process of bringing patients to the hospital is still difficult. Not only do parents have great difficulty in convincing patients to go to the hospital, but even if they can barely bring patients to the hospital, they have to go through a lot of trouble when entering the consultation room, and sometimes they lose all their efforts because they cannot do this “final step”. When parents finally bring their children to the hospital with hesitation, and the doctors believe that the patients’ conditions are so serious that they cannot be treated effectively without hospitalization and mobilize the parents to agree to hospitalize their children, the parents often have a lot of concerns. Their concerns were diverse, but largely reflected their ongoing desire for safety and overprotective behavior. The most common concern is the fear of psychological harm to their child in a specialized hospital with a hostile inpatient environment. This is because prior to being seen for a mental illness, their children were living in a privileged environment where they were “clothed and fed” and were cared for by their parents. Parents were concerned that their children would suffer in an inpatient setting that required them to take care of themselves. In fact, the standardized treatment and management of patients through inpatient care is beneficial to patients in terms of achieving better outcomes and increasing their psychological maturity in a group living environment, as well as giving parents who suffer from the symptoms of the patient’s disease a valuable time to recuperate and heal themselves. Another common concern of parents is the lack of parental care and protection in the inpatient setting, and the fear of bullying by other inpatients and neglect or abuse by medical staff. This concern reflects both the patient’s parents’ distrust of their children’s ability to adapt themselves and their distrust of others and even of social norms. Of course, patients’ parents also often have the misconception that their children are the most rational and least ill, while other patients are irrational, more ill, and have more dangerous behaviors. In fact, in the eyes of our psychiatrists, these patients are of similar severity, and no patient is more dangerous than any other. I often say to such parents, “Every parent of an inpatient thinks that their child is the most rational and least ill one, yet they are all serious enough to need hospitalization. Who, you say, is more rational than who? Who has the milder condition?” Before accepting the choice of hospitalization, parents often think that the hospitalization environment and experience will cast a shadow on the patient’s inner world, and even worry that the patient will hold a grudge against their parents and take revenge on them after they are discharged. In fact, the most important benefit of hospitalization for patients with serious illnesses is that they can receive standardized treatment and management, which is likely to lead to the best possible outcome. Imagine how a patient can look back on his or her hospitalization experience and hold a grudge if he or she has recovered through hospitalization and is able to return to society quickly with full social functioning. Moreover, after the patient has recovered from his illness, he will be able to fully realize the pain caused by his condition before hospitalization and the harm done to his parents by his morbid words and actions, so he will certainly regret it, so why should he hate it? There are also many parents who are worried that if their children are hospitalized, they will be labeled as “mentally ill” or “crazy” and will be discriminated against by society, and may be discriminated against and alienated by their neighbors, relatives and friends. It may even affect the future prospects of the patient in terms of schooling, employment, love, marriage and so on. In my opinion, the so-called “mental illness label” is a reflection of the fact that the society is not civilized enough. As society progresses, more and more people will eventually recognize and understand mental illnesses correctly, and treat people with mental illnesses as patients similar to physical illnesses, and be accepted by society. Secondly, it is not terrible to wear the hat of mental illness, but it is terrible to avoid treatment because of the stigma of the illness, which eventually makes the patient lose the chance to be cured and develop into a serious mental disability, completely losing the possibility of becoming a normal person. If a patient receives a correct diagnosis after hospitalization, and also receives scientific, reasonable and effective treatment, the patient not only obtains a cure, but also avoids the risk of recurrent illness by receiving guidance from the doctor, and never suffers from mental illness in the future, and becomes a completely normal individual with mental activities. If a single hospitalization can achieve such a goal, why should we not allow patients to be hospitalized? Moreover, with the increase in human life expectancy, it is a very insignificant fraction to take the time of illness and hospitalization as the numerator and one’s entire life as the denominator. As we have seen, most hospitalized patients go through this “trilogy”. If patients with mental disorders could shorten the time spent in each stage, and seek earlier consultation or hospitalization to receive standardized treatment, it would help them achieve the best possible outcome.