A Community Mental Health Approach in Identifying People at Risk of Poor Mental Health: A Case Study in Hong Kong

Abstract

People with mental health needs are often reluctant to seek help due to inaccessibility to service and also stigmatization, especially in Chinese societies. However, professional effort to identify the high-risk people is inadequate. In this paper the authors described a five-year community-based outreaching project, which aimed at identifying the high-risk groups in seven deprived and lowincome communities territory wide and linking them up with mental health and social services. We assessed the project outcome by analysing the data (total number = 2181 participants) gathered on-site using the 20-item Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The results of our analysis have shown that the project had successfully identified the high-risk groups (20.6%), with the following profile: the unemployed, housewife, the widowed and divorced and people with low education. They were referred to different services. The results of the post-intervention have indicated improved mental well-being of the participants who had received the services referred (n = 43). Our positive experience has confirmed the need of social workers to take an active role to reach out the unreachable, rather than be passive waiting them to come in.