Hong Kong has a woeful lack of psychiatrists, which can be traced back to government negligence and lack of funding
In the aftermath of Friday’s firebomb attack that left 19 people injured, it’s understandable people are worried about safety on the MTR, Hong Kong’s railway system. But equally worrying, if not even more so, is inadequate mental health care. The MTR attack may well be an isolated case. But if officials are investigating the incident as a public transport issue, surely health authorities are also justified in looking into whether the suspect might have fallen through the cracks in our public health care system. This is entirely possible, given the woefully inadequate state of our public-sector psychiatric service. The statistics are too depressing to contemplate. New psychiatric cases registered in specialist outpatient clinics jumped from 39,770 in 2009-2010 to 47,958 in 2014-2015. Waiting times for mental health treatment are the longest of all specialist services, ranging from one to more than three years.
