The recommendation was made by the jury at a coroner's inquest into a family suicide-killing in Tsz Wan Shan last year.

The jury, which deliberated for an hour, returned a verdict of suicide for 43-year-old mother Lau Hoi-chu who had been admitted to a mental hospital, and unlawful killing for her teenage son and daughter.

No family members were present to hear the verdict yesterday.

The jury said the mechanism for assessing and approving mental patients for discharge needed to be strengthened.

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In response, the Hospital Authority said it will proceed to study the recommendation.

"The Hospital Authority has an established mechanism for the discharge of mental patients that include a cross- disciplinary medical team to make assessment before they are discharged."

Patients after returning to the community will continue to receive follow- up treatment and supporting services.

"Medical workers will assess their progress, such as the risk of injuring themselves and others, their compliance to the treatment as well as opinions of their families, to assess if it is appropriate to allow the patients to return to the community," the authority said.

Concerns have been raised on medical services for mental patients as Lau had been admitted to Kwai Chung Hospital, where she was diagnosed with depressive symptoms on November 6.

She also had said she wanted to kill herself and her son.

Lau was discharged on November 25 after doctors found her condition had stabilized. She was found dead less than two days later.

During the four-day hearing, coroner Michael Chan Pik-kiu heard the mother was found hanged in a Tsz Wan Shan flat and the bodies of her son Law Chung-yan, 16, and daughter Law Yu- ching, 13 were discovered. They had been strangled.

The coroner had asked Kwai Chung Hospital consultant psychiatrist William Lo Tak-lam why the decision to discharge Lau was made by a junior doctor, Yip Pui-lam.

Yip, who became a medical practitioner in 2007, had only four months' experience in the psychiatric ward.

Lo replied it was normal for an attending physician to decide such matters, because he knew the patient.

The coroner told Yip he is concerned about recent cases in which psychiatric patients have hurt themselves and others shortly after being discharged.