Hong Kong protests: mental health issues rise drastically with more than 2 million adults showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, study finds
- Research published in The Lancet found 32 per cent of survey respondents showed signs of disorder, up from 5 per cent in March 2015
- Medical experts warn city is poorly equipped to deal with huge mental health burden
More than 2 million, or almost one in three, Hong Kong adults have shown symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder during the prolonged civil unrest in the city, a study published in a leading medical journal has found.
University of Hong Kong academics, who conducted the study, urged the government to step up its mental health provisions. Their research also suggested that up to 11 per cent of the city’s adult population were affected by probable depression last year, five times higher than the figure collected from 2009 to 2014, when it was just 2 per cent.
The research, published in an article in The Lancet, was the largest population-wide mental health survey – as questionnaires were sent to more than 18,000 residents aged 18 or above – as well as the longest observational one, comparing data across 10 years from 2009 to 2019.
The figures represented the equivalent of 1.9 million more adults with PTSD symptoms, and an additional 590,000 adults with probable depression compared to a decade ago.
Professor Gabriel Leung, the dean of HKU’s faculty of medicine who co-led the research, said: “Hong Kong is under-resourced to deal with this excess mental health burden.
