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.
Index Terms—Mental health policy, Hong Kong, colonial era,
post-colonial, mental health services.
A. C. K. Lee is with the Language and General Education Centre, Tung
Wah College, Hong Kong (e-mail: anitalee@twc.edu.hk).
G. Lam is now with the Department of Rehabilitation and Social Sciences,
Tung Wah College, Hong Kong (e-mail: gigilam@twc.edu.hk).
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Cite: Anita Chi-Kwan Lee and Gigi Lam, " Hong Kong’s Mental Health Policy – Preliminary Findings," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 5, no. 7, pp. 640-645, 2015.