People

Vivian Chan, a 16-year-old Form Five student in Wong Chuk Hang, had her life trajectory changed three years ago when she was bullied and sexually harassed at just 12 years old. The incident left her isolated, led to suicide attempts, and resulted in a year-long struggle with mental health symptoms before she finally received a diagnosis and started treatment at Queen Mary Hospital. Chan was diagnosed with moderate depression in early 2024, one year after her depression began to arise, which gradually worsened due to extended outpatient waiting times and delayed community intervention, she said. Hong Kong’s public hospital psychiatric clinics have long been plagued by lengthy waiting times and a severely imbalanced doctor-patient ratio, with the longest waiting time for new outpatient cases reaching up to 101 weeks in 2025.  While the government seeks to strengthen community mental health interventions in the hope of shortening clinical waiting lists, the effort is hampered by a shortage of resources for social workers’ early identification and prevention services training.  The number of new psychiatric outpatient cases at public clinics has continuously increased from 47,879 in 2022 to 53,353 in 2025, according to the Hospital Authority.  Around one in five urgent patients faces a median waiting time of one to three weeks for treatment, while the median waiting period for most non-urgent patients ranges from 17 to 76 weeks. After joining Queen Mary Hospital’s waiting list in 2024, Chan eagerly awaited professional medical help, only to endure a 28-week delay.  Chan felt intense pain and helplessness during the waiting period. “Without a diagnosis, I kept overthinking if I was truly sick,” she added.  She once locked herself in her bedroom for weeks to escape from the painful reality.  “I pulled the curtains to block out sunlight, wrapped myself in blankets, and couldn’t hold …

In a sunlit activity room of the Cheung Sha Wan Special Child Care Centre, young children are drawing with a therapist’s help. Nearby, another repeats words prompted by a speech therapist. These simple moments are government-subsidised intensive rehabilitation training for children with disabilities. Cherry Lee, 41, waited nearly two years for her daughter with moderate autism to access such a facility and receive intensive training. “It would have been better if my daughter could have entered the centre sooner,” she said. “At the very least, she could have had an earlier opportunity to develop essential self-care skills.” Hong Kong’s 52 government-funded Special Child Care Centres provide full-day centre-based care and cognitive training, speech, occupational and physiotherapy programmes for children with moderate to severe disabilities aged 2 to 6 before they enter primary school. Lee’s two-year wait is far from an isolated case. According to the Social Welfare Department, the average waiting time for the centres is 19.1 months in 2024. Experts and NGOs say that this wait means a delay in development for special needs children, while families are burdened with extra costs and stress in taking care of children. The government added 64 centre quotas for a total of 2,580 places in 2025, with 513 children on the waiting list, according to the Social Welfare Department. “The supply of places cannot keep up with the speed of increasing demand; it is not enough for those special needs children,” a representative from Hong Chi Association, an NGO operating three Special Child Care Centres, confirmed. “This is the core reason for the long wait.” Lee’s daughter, Sakina Muk, was placed in a centre run by NGO Heep Hong Society when she was 5 in August 2025, meaning she only has about a year she can use the service. “Even with early …