Hong Kong's mental health policy - preliminary findings

Abstract

People in Hong Kong bear the brunt of diverse types of mental disorder and yet the mental health services in Hong Kong are criticized as seriously insufficient. Psychiatrist F.K. Tsang even lamented about the lack of a consistent mental health policy [1]. The present paper offers the theoretical framework and the preliminary findings of a full-scale research on Hong Kong’s enigmatic mental health policy in the colonial era and under China’s sovereignty respectively. Shedding light on the two-way interaction of government consultation, the theoretical framework is followed by in-depth interviews with the different stakeholders. Initial findings from the in-depth interviews with a small group of interviewees from different sectors have yielded a consensus about the lack of a long-term mental health policy in the governments of both the colonial and post-colonial periods, which only administered and still provide short-term annual budgets for renewable mental health services. The change of sovereignty has not brought about any change in either the philosophy of budget allocation or the process of policy-making.