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Had the tsunamis that devasted south Asia arrived a decade ago, Dr Kitty Wu's plans for the New
Year would have been a write-off. Rather than seeing-in a much-needed break at home with her
family, she would have been stationed in her office, charged with a daunting task: co-ordinating a
counseling service for victims traumatized by the disaster.
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"It would have been a difficult time," says Wu, a clinical psychologist at the Hong Kong Psychological
Society.
Thanks to the progress Hong Kong had made towards offering post-trauma assistance, however, Wu
no longer needs to face the overwhelming work alone. Counselling hotlines and debriefings for the
distraught are commonplace today.
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A Social Welfare Department hotline was in place just days after disaster stuck, and the Hospital
Authority's senior clinical psychologist, Rosalie Kwong, is already in Thailand as part of the medical
team.
In the 1990s, post-trauma assistance was still a relatively overlooked service. The focus then was
mainly on attending to those with physical injuries. Wu recalls the first time she and her colleagues
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were thrust into action: the tragic crush in Lan Kwai Fong which left 21 people dead and scores
injuried - and shocked - 12 years ago today.
"That was very gruelling, because all we could do was to operate a hotline, with each of us manning
it for a few hours after work," she says of a service that was hastily established just a few days after
the tragedy. "There was only one line, so if someone rang in, others seeking help wouldn't get
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through - it was the time before mobile phones.
Debriefings were held but were sparsely attended. So instead of waiting for the needy to come
forward, Wu and her colleagues went to them.
"We spent several days just combing the shops in Lan Kwai Fong, talking to people about the
potential stress the event would have had on them and methods to cope with it - after all, they were |
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the ones who were exposed to it all, " Wu says. "Nobody actually came to us for help - so we had to
ring every newspapar on our own initiative and provide information to them. It was a time of pro-
actively introducing society to the meaning of post-traumatic stress."
In the light to such general indifference to mental health issues - even after one of Hong Kong's most
significant tragedies of recent years - the Hong Kong Psychological Society's Division of Clinical
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Psychology established the Critical Incident Team, a group designed to formulate contingency plans
for psychological intervention in the face of civil disasters.
At its launch, the team stood virtually alone in its work, but public awareness grew over the long-term
psychological effects on the survivors of the Lan Kwai Fong tragedy. The team also performed post-
disaster counseling after two blazes in 1996 (the Pat Sin Leng hill fire and the Garley Building in Yau
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Ma Tei). The government - with help of the team - also started its own services in the Social Welfare
Department and in hospitals, rendering the Critical Incident Team's services obsolete. Wu and her
team no longer need to organize hotlines, which she insists is a good sign that mental health is
officially acknowledged as a legitimate issue.
Public acceptance towards the pursuit of post-trauma guidance also helped clinical psychologists, |
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Wu says.
"Now people understand that seeing psychologists doesn't mean you're mad or you're weak.
"That is now seen as positive coping. Then again, there is still stigmatization towards people seeking
psychiatric help - and it certainly affects how many people will contact us."
Such prejudice was anchored partly by the fact that Hong Kong has been hardly disrupted regularly
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by natural or human disasters. Massive social upheavals - such as the fear Sars generated in 2003 -
have certainly wrought much mental stress on the population, just as the Lan Kwai Fong crush had
on witnesses of the event.
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