Time for more effective treatment of high-risk mental patients

HK Opinion
H03 China Daily Hong Kong Edition Victor Fung Keung
2012-08-15


Time for more effective treatment of high-risk mental patients


On Aug 11, 2012, a 29-year old woman suffering from schizophrenia, who had failed to attend an appointment for a medical check-up, threw her baby from a high-rise building to death and then attempted to kill herself.

It is time we legislated the “Community treatment order”, which would empower police and physicians to require that high-risk mental patients be placed under treatment. The law, if passed, would protect seriously-sick mental patients and other people in society. Why the procrastination?

The proposed legislation, which has been in consultation since 2010, is similar to laws in force in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, among other countries. Do we need more shocking deaths before this legislation is tabled, passed and put into law?

At present, only the courts can order a mental patient to be hospitalized for treatment. In recent months several cases involving mental patients killing innocent people share a common denominator: the mentally-sick killers all had failed to attend scheduled medical consultations.

In May 2012, a man with a mental condition killed his wife and seriously injured three family members before jumping to his death from a Kwun Tong apartment. The man had skipped medical consultations. In February 2012, a mentally-ill man hacked to death a security guard in Sheung Shui in the New Territories; and a few months earlier, a 15-year-old teenager chopped his mother and sister to death. The list grows longer and longer every day.

The proposed “Community treatment order” would have forced the patients involved in these killings to receive treatment and might have prevented these human tragedies. The authorities’ concern, incredible as it may seem, is that the proposed “Community treatment order” could violate the patients’ privacy. Such a concern is only a small price to pay. If one suffers from mental illness, I’ll bet 99 percent of his neighbors would know; and all of them, I am sure, would vote “yes” to enactment of the proposed “Community treatment order.

Mental sickness in Hong Kong is growing, as study and work pressures keep on mounting. The Regeneration Society released a survey in July, that reveals nearly 60 percent of students from six to 16 are depressed. Depression can develop into more serious forms of mental illness such as bipolar disorder. The main culprit behind the high number of depressed young people in Hong Kong is stress arising from examinations.

Around the same time, the Chinese Rhenish Church in Hong Kong made public a research report, which shows that retirees in their 70s are four times more likely to suffer from anxiety disorder (a form of mental illness) than people under 50. This stems from worries concerning finance, daily living and personal well-being.

Hong Kong’s population is aging. The mental sickness issue can only worsen as people grow older. Currently, we have about 170,000 people suffering from mental illness, among whom about 40,000 are seriously affected. About 55,000 patients over 60 received treatments in 2011, government figures indicate.

The government, to its credit, has done a lot to try to deal with this chronic problem. The budget for mental health services has jumped 30 percent to HK$4.58 billion this financial year from the 2007-2008 financial year.

The government promotes mental health among the young and their parents through the “child and adolescent mental health community support project”. It plans to open 24 “integrated community centers” in Hong Kong’s 18 districts to provide educational activities for grown-ups.

These are initiatives that deserve kudos. But education is too slow and ineffective to prevent killings. York Chow, former secretary for food and health, said on June 27 that the government had set up a focus group on the “community treatment order” in 2010 to study the experience and relevant legislation of overseas jurisdictions in detail and the applicability in Hong Kong. Chow added that “as the study is still in progress, we are unable to set out an exact timetable for the legislation.” Dr Ko Wing-man, current secretary for food and health, is well advised to table the proposed “community treatment order” as soon as possible and turn the proposal into law.

The author is coordinator of Hong Kong Baptist University’s financial journalism program.