The problems associated with treating the city's 200,000 psychiatric patients, whether in hospital or in their homes, are so wide-ranging that they can no longer be managed by the Hospital Authority and individual government departments, say psychiatrists and a patients' group.
They advocate the creation of a super-high-level body that would cover not just medical services but also housing, social welfare and employment for psychiatric patients.
The College of Psychiatrists, the top training body for psychiatrists in Hong Kong, and the Patients' Rights Association envisage something similar to the special task force created three years ago to tackle youth drug abuse, and which is headed by Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lung.
At the same time the Hospital Authority has drawn up a five-year plan for public mental health services.
Meanwhile, a government working group on mental health services has set out general principles, goals and directions - though this framework policy has not yet been made public.
The authority blueprint and the groups' call for a higher-level body follow several violent incidents involving mental patients. In the latest, on the Kwai Shing East estate in Kwai Chung, last month, a resident of the public housing estate with a mental illness chopped two people to death and seriously injured three others.