Nine-year-old Hongkonger diagnosed with ADHD only after she told tutor she wanted to kill herself
Children and teenagers with emotional or mental health problems have to wait up to 17 months for treatment at Hong Kong’s overburdened public hospitals
Eva Chan, a mother of two, began to notice that her then six-year-old daughter was emotionally unstable and became nervous easily. The girl would get sick and have diarrhoea before a test, and nipped herself so hard that she left red marks all over her arms.
When she was nine, she told her tutor that she wanted to kill herself by jumping off a building.
It was then that teachers and social workers warned Chan that the girl’s problems could be more than just behavioural.
Her daughter, now 10, was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), one of the most common mental conditions affecting children. Those with the disorder have problems paying attention or sitting still, and lack self-control. But due to the high demand for public psychiatric treatment, the girl has had to wait over a year to see a doctor.
After her daughter’s diagnosis, Chan took her seven-year-old son for an assessment, and it was confirmed that he too had the condition.
