The mental health crisis in Hong Kong

Lucas Niewenhuis

One of the lasting impacts of the current Hong Kong protests is likely to be a more civically engaged city, and a continued, fiercer resistance to Beijing’s encroachment on the territory’s promised autonomy.

Another impact, reported a few times previously in mainstream media, is now becoming clearer: a massive mental health crisis. The BBC reports:

Around a third of adults in Hong Kong reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the often-violent pro-democracy protests, according to a new study…
The research…was based on surveys of more than 18,000 Hong Kong residents between 2009 and 2019.

The increase in PTSD symptoms corresponds to around 2 million adults out of a city of 7.4 million.

Around 11 percent of adults reported symptoms of depression, up from around 2 percent before the city’s earlier 2014 Occupy protests.

The new study was conducted by public health researchers at the University of Hong Kong, and published in The Lancet journal. You can read the whole thing here.

Lucas Niewenhuis is the Newsletter Editor at The China Project. Previously, he has researched China-Africa relations at the Social Science Research Council, interned at the Council on Foreign Relations, and studied Chinese language and culture in Shanghai and Beijing. Read more

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