A woman hanged herself after strangling her young son in the teeny hours of a cold night on Jan 8, 2013. Both victims were certified dead by paramedics. The apparent murder and suicide had been a tragedy in the making. I can't help but ask these questions:

1. The woman had suffered from mental illness and attempted suicide once last September. She was hospitalized until four days before the final tragedy occurred. She checked out of hospital against her doctor's advice. Couldn't the hospital apply for a restraining order to prevent her from going home, knowing dark well that the chance of her committing suicide was high?

2. The mentally-sick woman didn't ask to be released. It was her family member (it wasn't clear whether this "family member" is her separated husband) who signed the form so that she could return home. On the night she allegedly killed her son and then committed suicide, she was left alone with her son in their flat. What was her family member thinking? Why was there not anyone taking care of the sick and suicidal woman?

I am so frustrated to see tragedies like this happening again and again in our society. It is a no-brainer to realize that the mentally sick woman, when left alone at home, would become very depressed and suicidal thoughts could easily seep in. It seems like both her family member and society at large have failed her.

The sick woman was in distraught because her husband was in the process of divorcing her. Even an uneducated person would know that a woman engulfed in marital problems couldn't always think straight. Social and medical workers should have intervened when they appraised that the risk was high for the sick woman to do something irrational when left alone at home with her son. Apparently no one followed the case up after she was discharged.

To many of us, it is one suicide too many. We always hear that something should be done after a fatal incident occurred but so far not much has been done.

A few months earlier on Aug 12, 2012, a young schizophrenic threw her baby from a block in Kowloon's Sham Shui Po district. The baby died. She tried to jump from the corridor but was stopped in time.

The woman suffered from post-natal depression but she refused to receive treatment. In this case, with a 10-year history of mental illness, the writing was on the wall that accidents were prone to happen when nobody was watching her. The woman's husband told the police he had found her emotionally disturbed prior to the fatal incident.

The irony is that the schizophrenic woman was charged with murder. Again, the question is: why nobody was watching her? Is she a murderer or a victim of inadequate care?

In our city three people take their lives every day. Hong Kong's suicide rate has dropped from 18.6 cases per 100,000 people to 13.6 cases over the past decade. Nevertheless, our city's suicide rate remains high among world cities.

The Samaritans has called on the government to give mental health an appropriate priority in the city. It adds that a sustainable public health policy should focus on providing a comprehensive wellness intervention program for people with mental illness and for their careers. Let us all pray that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying would address this "life and death" issue in his policy speech.

The author is coordinator of the B.S.Sc in financial journalism program at Hong Kong Baptist University.

(HK Edition 01/11/2013 page3)