Mental health problems for the young generation matter as they carry the future of the city, the Youth Wellbeing Practitioners program highlights.
Jointly launched by a local mental health charity Mind HK and Jardine Matheson Group's charity, Mindset Hong Kong, the program began in 2021 with the aim of providing mental health support for youths aged between 12 to 24 in Hong Kong.
It now has the first graduates of the youth-trained programs.
"Hong Kong is now grappling with a high prevalence of mental health conditions as one in every six residents is now suffering from common mental disorders," said Candice Powell, CEO of Mind HK.
"According to our survey, the public healthcare system now has long waiting times of up to 95 weeks for psychiatric support, as well as Hong Kong also facing a scarcity of mental health professionals with a psychologist-to-population ratio of 0.82:10,000. That's why we were inspired to start the program in 2021."
During the program, 51 youth wellbeing practitioners were trained through an intensive 120 hours of in-person training and a nine-month supervised clinical placement among 32 host organizations, inclusive of schools, NGOs, and online via Mind HK.
They had to grasp bilingual proficiency and specialized knowledge, as well as be required to deliver up to eight one-on-one session intervention support for young individuals experiencing mild to moderate psychological distress, including anxiety and depressive symptoms.
"Adolescence is of great importance in one's life," said Yan Chow, one of the 51 wellbeing counsellors.
"During my participation in the program, I met many students who told me that they often feel stuck when they have emotional problems. However, they always feel much better after confiding in me. I think the process of 'speaking out' itself is already an emotional outlet."
Another graduate of the program, Sit Chung-ping, said: "I would do some research for related solutions when I encountered emotional issues myself in the past.
"But I also realized that having somebody by my side to encourage and support me would make things easier. Now I can be a solution provider and help others since I have experienced the process."
He praised the thoroughness of the program, saying: "In addition to 120 hours of training and nine months of placement, we also had one hour of personal counseling per week and group counseling every month on our training.
"The roles of practitioners when we provide emotional support was also clearly defined as each individual case would be conducted with targeted assessment."
The 51 counsellor delivered over 3,336 free mental health support sessions to 417 individuals aged between 12 and 24 within their placement period, according to the program statistics.
They also held multiple conferences and forums on the topic of mental health issues attended by around 1,000 youths.
"Minors are a significant group which we pay attention to. Of the 417 participants who completed the full eight intervention sessions, 268 of them are aged between 12 to 17," said Hung Suet-lin, Hong Kong Baptist University's head and director of the Social Work Practice and Mental Health Center, who also took part in the research for the program.
"The YWP program, together with Mind HK's Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner Training Program - which aims to train wellbeing practitioners to provide mental health support to individuals aged 18 and above, is under Mind HK's Improving Access to Community Therapies initiative," said Powell.
She added that the iACT is designed to be a training and service platform offering "exclusive, low cost or pro-bono, short-term" mental health support to those needed in different age groups.
"We are currently training 30 additional practitioners. And we aim to train an additional 100 practitioners within the next three years, with Mindset Hong Kong, to address existing treatment gaps in the local healthcare system," she said.
The program founders have lofty aims.
Said Powell: "By 2026, we will have trained a minimum of 180 practitioners in total to serve the Hong Kong community with a particular focus on those who could benefit from early intervention treatment and face barriers in accessing proper clinical support, such as individuals from low-income families."
Website: mind.org.hk/ywp-programme/
roxanne.li@singtaonewscorp.com
