The number of secondary school students diagnosed with mental illness in Hong Kong has doubled over the past five academic years, with the increase potentially under-reported due to reluctance among some pupils and parents to disclose health information, education authorities have said.<\/p>\n
The data is in line with a trend recorded by the Health Bureau showing a growing number of people aged 15 to 24 being treated at public hospital psychiatric departments.<\/p>\n
Among that age range, the number of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression rose by 57 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively, over the five-year period.<\/p>\n
According to official figures submitted by education authorities to the legislature on Tuesday, the number of secondary school students diagnosed with mental illness rose from 660 in the 2020-21 academic year to 1,330 in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
The number of students with special needs saw the largest increase, with the category including nine types of mental illnesses, including autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.<\/p>\n
In primary schools, the number of students diagnosed with mental illness also rose from 130 to 200 in the same period, a 54 per cent increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of secondary school students diagnosed with mental illness in Hong Kong has doubled over the past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[144959,1232,12330,10564,49,48,5831,6319,229404,84,104905,15674,168710,393,6709,394,44,229402,30399,63021,229403,13511],"class_list":["post-608065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-advisory-committee-on-mental-health","tag-anxiety","tag-autism-spectrum-disorder","tag-bipolar-disorder","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-department-of-health","tag-depression","tag-education-bureau","tag-health","tag-health-bureau","tag-hong-kong","tag-hospital-authority","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-illness","tag-mentalhealth","tag-news","tag-primary-schools","tag-scmp","tag-secondary-school-students","tag-social-welfare-department","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}