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":534119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[121193,3274,8989,7124,2863,3275,184706,102,184703,6875,179355,1906,6928,6623,50,184704,23727,51755,184705,9728,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-534118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-advisory-committee-on-mental-health","9":"tag-anxiety","10":"tag-autism-spectrum-disorder","11":"tag-bipolar-disorder","12":"tag-department-of-health","13":"tag-depression","14":"tag-education-bureau","15":"tag-health","16":"tag-health-bureau","17":"tag-hong-kong","18":"tag-hospital-authority","19":"tag-mental-health","20":"tag-mental-illness","21":"tag-mentalhealth","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-primary-schools","24":"tag-scmp","25":"tag-secondary-school-students","26":"tag-social-welfare-department","27":"tag-suicide","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}