Every morning in Kowloon's Shek Kip Mei market, a middle-aged man can be seen cursing the air with no obvious target or purpose. It is not hard to tell that he suffers from mania - a kind of mental sickness. And he needs proper treatment.

The results of the Hong Kong Mental Morbidity Survey have been submitted to the Hong Kong government's Food and Health Bureau recently. The survey suggests that family doctors should help diagnose patients showing signs of distress or other kinds of mild mental sicknesses before they need to see a psychiatrist. This initiative is worth supporting.

The government-sponsored survey was conducted between 2010 and 2013 and is the first of its kind in the city's history. It shows that about one in seven people aged between 16 and 75 in Hong Kong are suffering from anxiety, depression or other common mood disorders. Some of the more severe mental-illness cases include obsessive or panic disorders.

Unfortunately, only a quarter of people afflicted with mild mental illness get professional help. It is now time to "call a spade a spade" - to plainly identify the problems and speak about them openly. We need to overcome the stigma and other issues surrounding mental illness. If more people are treated for anxiety and depression, their illnesses will not develop into more serious cases and overwhelm Hong Kong's psychiatric services.

Family doctors from now on should be more open with clients and help them treat mild mental illness. Instead of hiding patients' conditions under the guise of physical malfunction or maladies, family doctors should be more forthcoming and inform clients when they suffer from mild mental illness. For example, if a person suffers from depression, he or she should be treated as a mental patient. These two kinds of mental sickness are very common in Hong Kong due to Hong Kong people's stressful lifestyle, alcohol and substance abuse, marital separation, cramped living environments and financial difficulties. Self-denial, both by family doctors and patients, only prolongs the treatment and recovery periods. Anxiety and depression are treatable when doctors and patients keep an open mind.

In a nutshell, family doctors should feel at ease in telling patients that they suffer from mental sickness.

When family doctors get involved with early detection and treatment of mild mental illness in patients, many such conditions can be treated before they develop into serious cases. If more family doctors are enlisted in the detection and treatment of these cases, the government's psychiatric services will not be overwhelmed. Also, developing a broad-based mental health service in the primary sector will encourage those struggling with mental issues to come forward, because the unhelpful social stigma surrounding mental illness will be reduced.

At present, Hong Kong's psychiatrists are overworked. They normally treat 15 people in a session of three hours (2 pm to 5 pm, for instance). That is just 12 minutes per patient. They should be enabled to spend more time treating serious cases rather than all kinds. That is why the mild cases should be handled by family doctors. According to the Mental Morbidity Survey, only 26 percent of patients suffering from anxiety and depression receive proper treatment. Let us hope that this will rise to a more acceptable level, with the majority receiving proper treatment.

When more people in the initial stage of mental illness can receive treatment from their family doctors, their sickness will not develop into a serious case. So, family doctors, please be more open with patients suffering from anxiety and depression. There is no harm in informing patients that they suffer from such mild mental illness. Proper diagnosis will prevent these patients from getting worse. This will contribute to the well-being of the patients and Hong Kong society.

(HK Edition 07/08/2015 page9)