Brave smile from girl who fell 16 floors
Four-year-old Leung Ka-yee managed a smile as she lay bandaged in her hospital bed yesterday, a day after surviving a horrific 16-floor plunge that killed her mother.
Conscious but still in critical condition with kidney damage and leg fractures, Ka-yee grinned at Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung when he visited her in Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung. 'She is conscious and responsive ... I gave her a doll and she smiled at me. Certainly, she is still in shock but her overall situation is steady,' Cheung said. But a clinical psychologist said there could be more tears than smiles in store.
Her mother, 32-year-old Lam Po-yin, died after leaping from their 17th-floor Tung Chung flat with Ka-yee in her arms on Monday, landing on the roof of a first-floor walkway.
Dr Paul Wong Wai-ching, of the University of Hong Kong's Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, said Ka-yee would need help from a team of doctors, occupational therapists, clinical social workers and educational psychologists to help her adapt to the possible physical and psychological changes to her life as well as the daily challenges.
Wong said suicide survivors were so rare he could only estimate the possible effects on the girl from clinical experience elsewhere, which showed that a number of problems may develop. These include depression, drug abuse or alcoholism, and personality disorders which would affect relationships with others. Ka-yee might also wet the bed, or have nightmares and fear the dark.
Wong said children might misunderstand that suicide was a solution to problems. 'In the worst case, suicidal behaviour will circulate among family members,' he said.
He said if psychosis was the reason behind a suicide, the illness might be inherited by the next generation and thus increase the possibility of more suicides.
Centre director Paul Yip Siu-fai said the latest case, the second of its kind in the Yat Chung Estate in less than a month, showed that community assistance was hardly seen in Tung Chung.
A 17-year-old boy who was being treated for psychosis leapt from a building in front of 600 students and teachers at Tung Chung Catholic School on May 24.
Yip said there was a large wealth gap in Tung Chung. Less well-off residents mainly lived around Yat Tung Estate and most of them have their own family problems, which means they are unable to help each other.
He said a quarter of the residents received welfare payments, and there were also many single unemployed people and those with mental illnesses. He suggested that NGOs be more proactive in engaging residents with different needs in Tung Chung.
Ka-yee's father, Leung Ka-ho, 28, had been jobless for two months and the family was living on welfare.
Yip said it was the fourth family suicide in the city this year - all involving mothers grabbing young children and leaping from a building, while the annual average number was only two in the past few years.
He said media reports on such tragedies may prompt copycat suicides, and cited the publicity around the suicide attempts at Shenzhen manufacturer Foxconn. Yip and Wong said the depiction of suicides in TV dramas was unnecessary.
On the rise
On average, there have been two family suicides a year for the past few years
This is the number of family suicides that have occurred so far this year: 4
