Services for the Mentally Ill and Mentally Handicapped

At the end of 2000, psychiatric hospitals provided 3 775 beds while public psychiatric units of general hospitals provided 1 649 beds. The number of psychiatric day hospital places remained at 639. Castle Peak Hospital, one of Hong Kong's two main psychiatric hospitals, is being redeveloped.

    Community work and after-care units of psychiatric hospitals help discharged patients. The community psychiatric nursing service and domiciliary occupational therapy service, in particular, aim to provide continual care, treatment and rehabilitation programmes for discharged mental patients in their home settings. This helps patients' social readjustment while educating them and their families on mental health. Five community psychiatric teams and nine psychogeriatric teams have been set up to provide designated care and rehabilitation programmes to psychiatric and psychogeriatric patients. Other complementary rehabilitative services run by government departments and non-governmental organisations include day-centres, halfway houses, long-stay care homes, vocational training, selective placement and social clubs.

    Severely mentally handicapped persons requiring intensive nursing care and rehabilitation services are cared for at Tuen Mun Hospital (200 beds), Caritas Medical Centre (300 beds) and Siu Lam Hospital (300 beds). One outreach team has been established to provide services for early intervention.