Battles with illness, loneliness and post-retirement blues are pushing China's elderly population into a spiral of depression and fragile mental health. Cang Wei and Song Wenwei report from Nanjing.

'Granny" Li has attempted suicide three times. First, she tried to gas herself by leaving the oven turned on, but her neighbors smelled the gas and intervened. The second time she took an overdose of sleeping pills, and on the third she jumped into a deep pond and tried to drown herself. However, Li's now-vigilant neighbors saved her on those occasions too.

The 60-year-old lives alone in the Pukou district of Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu province. One day in 2011, she opened the door to a young man selling healthcare products. On hearing the young man call her "mum", Li - whose son and daughter live in different districts of Nanjing and hadn't visited her for more than a year - was reduced to tears and bought products worth more than 30,000 yuan ($4,800).