Macroscope | Ignoring mental illness treatment creates an economic burden for us all
Hong Kong lags behind the rest of the world in terms of treatment, yet if cheap remedies were implemented, they would pay for themselves
Last Sunday, as a colourful contrast to the tent camps occupying Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, 460 crazily costumed staff from 60 top companies joined the annual charity Rat Race around the streets of Central. They raised HK$3 million for Hong Kong's "orphan" of charitable causes - mental illness.
Hongkongers are generous and sympathetic to causes ranging from children and education to elderly care and battered animals. But mental illness is an "untouchable" subject, embarrassing and stigmatised. We pay a huge social price for this, and from a business point of view, we pay a huge economic price too.
Data in Hong Kong on the price paid for mental ill health is almost non-existent, but evidence from the World Health Organisation, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and a brilliant new book on Britain's mental health challenges (Thrive by Richard Layard and David Clark) suggests the price we pay in Hong Kong - and worldwide - is huge, and should not be ignored.
In Britain, the US and the European Union, one in six people at any one point in time is suffering from depression or some other form of crippling anxiety disorder. One in three families includes a family member who is mentally ill. More than one-third of us will at some point suffer some form of debilitating mental illness.
We are talking here about ailments ranging from full-on schizophrenia to deep depression, social phobias, panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders and so on.
The WHO says mental illnesses account for almost 40 per cent of all illness (by contrast, strokes, cancer, heart disease and diabetes together account for 20 per cent).
If you break a leg, you will automatically and quickly get the problem treated. With mental health, that is not so.