China has evacuated nearly 160,000 people as a huge earthquake-created lake keeps rising towards bursting levels, amid frantic efforts to ease the danger.

A total of 158,000 people had been moved from areas immediately in front of Tangjiashan lake, which was formed when a landslide blocked a river in the devastating May 12 quake, the China Daily said.

Video: China evacuates thousands

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Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting yesterday of the cabinet's quake relief headquarters that handling this and three dozen other "quake lakes" in China's tremor-hit southwest was the "most pressing" task.

Water in the Tangjiashan lake is rising two metres every day and by yesterday it was only 23 metres from the lowest level of the barrier, the paper said, citing Cai Qihua, a local water management official.

The lake is holding enough water to fill 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, and if all of it comes gushing out, millions of people could be at risk.

More than 600 engineers and soldiers were at the lake working non-stop to dig a diversion channel, but they would not be able to complete the task until June 5.

Up to 1.3 million people will have to be relocated if the lake barrier is breached and officials have already started preparing for that contingency.

The village of Tianlin, among the first to be flooded if the barrier bursts, was one of several communities holding evacuation drills.

People went through the village banging gongs and speaking into loudspeakers, directing the 680 residents to seek higher ground in 20 minutes -- the time they will have to save themselves in the worst case.

The May 12 earthquake, which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, flattened entire towns and villages across an area of mountainous Sichuan province the size of South Korea.

The death toll from the disaster has reached 67,183, with another 20,790 people missing, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Hospitals and clinics were destroyed along with so much else across Sichuan province in the quake, leaving acute shortages of staff and facilities.

In the immediate aftermath, medical services have focused on treating crushed and broken bones, amputated limbs and on preventing disease outbreaks.

Experts warn that mental trauma could be a hidden toll for many survivors.

The government says the quake may have killed more than 80,000 people, leaving many more to deal with the deaths of loved ones.

Millions have had their homes shattered and their lives thrown into turmoil. No government estimate of people needing psychological help has been released, although the state-run Legal
Daily newspaper quoted an expert as saying they could number as high as 600,000.

Teams of psychologists, psychiatrists and volunteer counsellors have gone to the hardest-hit areas, where mental health professionals have been swamped.

"China has been struggling to help thousands of people distressed and traumatised in the unprecedented earthquake that ravaged many parts of Sichuan," the official Xinhua News Agency said last week.

Many volunteers and experts have rushed to quake zones but psychologists are still in great demand.

In the past, there has been a social stigma attached to mental illness in China. Increasingly fast-paced - and stressful - lifestyles stemming from two decades of economic success have forced a greater awareness of the problem.

Xinhua reported last year that there were 16 million mental patients in the country but services at the grass roots level were still lacking, and public awareness was minimal.

Health officials have said that by of the end of 2006, there were only 1,124 mental institutions, with 146,000 beds and 19,000 psychiatrists or assistant psychiatrists.

Hospitals left standing by the quake have been overrun with serious injuries.

The government has rushed more than 10,000 doctors or nurses to the area and a dozen field hospitals have been erected, Health Ministry spokesman Sun Jiahai said yesterday in Beijing.
Signs of mental and emotional strain are widespread.

Relatives, weeping inconsolably, fall to the ground in front of plastic-wrapped bodies of sons and daughters killed in a school collapse in Hanwang.