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Written by: Commentary Editing Room
2020-11-24 17:20
Last update date: 2020-11-24 17:20
Last Saturday (21st) a tragedy occurred in Lang Cuiyuan, Sham Tseng. A 51-year-old depressed woman and a pair of children were found lying in their corpses for nearly a week.
The deceased has gone, and the specific reasons may be difficult to trace, but the various factors involved still inevitably arouse the public's attention to mental health support, and reflect on what our society can do to reduce the occurrence of similar tragedies?
The background of the tragedy of Long Crest Garden shows that Hong Kong's overall mental health services are seriously inadequate.
The mother in the case suffered from depression in 2005 and suffered from this problem for 15 years.
In fact, depression is again referred to as emotional cold, which is intended to point out that it is widespread, but as long as timely treatment and intervention will not have the characteristics of major problems.
Regrettably, the supply of mental health support in Hong Kong has been in short supply. The backlog of cases and the long waiting list have left many mild cases in despair.
At present, there are more than 30,000 stable new cases in psychiatric specialties. Among them, the New Territories East Hospital with the longest waiting time requires 134 weeks, and the shortest Island East Hospital requires 44 weeks.
In order to relieve the pressure of psychiatric departments in public hospitals, the Social Welfare Department has opened 24 mental health centers in 18 districts.
Although the original intention of this move is good, it is still difficult to exert its full effect due to insufficient manpower and supervision.
According to the current manpower plan, a team of 26 people is responsible for a population of 330,000, which means that social workers in a center are generally responsible for about 50 cases at the same time.
Coupled with the adoption of quantitative evaluation standards by the SWD, a social worker is usually responsible for a large long-term project and other administrative tasks in addition to these cases.
Manpower and supervision have caused the weight of regional mental health centers to be less important than quality, and it is difficult to effectively support the people in real need.
The Hong Kong College of Psychiatrics conducted a mental health questionnaire survey on primary school parents and staff from July to October this year. The results showed that about 20% of parents and school staff respectively showed at least one item of moderate to severe depression , Anxiety and post-traumatic sequelae symptoms, which are largely related to the new crown epidemic.
(Photo by Huang Yingjin)
Insufficient support and the epidemic
In the context of the inherent lack of mental health support in Hong Kong, the tragedy of Long Crest Garden highlights how the epidemic has exacerbated the plight of local mental health support.
For example, the children involved in the case did not have to return to school in the past two months, which may further increase the emotional pressure on the mother.
Several surveys this year have pointed out that the epidemic and school suspensions have increased emotional stress for parents. For example, a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Youth Association in March showed that nearly 60% (59.4%) of parents said that the epidemic caused them to be stressed frequently or occasionally; and more than 70% (73.2%) refers to negative emotions when unable to deal with stress. In addition, the survey of young women Christians in Hong Kong in the same month used WHO standards to calculate the mental state of parents in Hong Kong and found that nearly 70% of the parents interviewed scored higher than the standard 12 points. They are in a state of mental distress and need to receive individual counseling; the Hong Kong College of Psychiatry's survey results from July to October also show that 22.9% and 21.5% of the interviewed parents and school staff showed moderate to severe emotions during the suspension of classes. Problem symptoms.
The stress of urban life will inevitably cause people to have different mental and emotional health problems, but if social mental health support is strengthened, the resulting tragedies can also be reduced.
It is a pity that Carrie Lam has been in power for three years. In the past two years, the policy address has only briefly mentioned related issues and lacked specific improvement measures.
The tragedy of Long Crest Garden can be said to be a wake-up call for the society. Being alert to the various pressures brought by the epidemic may become the last straw that overwhelms the mental health of Hong Kong people.
Especially when the epidemic and its impact do not dissipate in a moment, the government's epidemic prevention work needs to pay more attention to the mental health needs of the citizens, otherwise the emotional pressure will become another social plague.
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