Hong Kong has been talking more openly about youth mental health than ever before – and with good reason. Student suicides climbed to a decade high of 32 cases in 2023, and there were 28 more last year. The number of students struggling with mental health issues rose 27 per cent between 2023 and 2024.
Beyond schools, the city recorded 1,092 suicides in 2023, almost three people a day. Researchers note worrying trends among younger adults, particularly men aged 25-39.
The policy response has focused on services for youth – counselling, stepped-care models, hotline support and awareness campaigns. These are important but if Hong Kong is serious about turning this crisis around, it must move beyond treating young people as passive recipients of care. Youth inclusion is not a “soft” add-on to mental health policy. It is one of Hong Kong’s safest, most cost-effective strategies to combat a deepening crisis.
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Today’s youth are highly educated and deeply online. In 2021, 62 per cent of young people aged 15-34 in Hong Kong had attended post-secondary education, up from 46.5 per cent a decade earlier. But education has not translated into security or a voice. Precarious work, housing unaffordability, academic pressure, digital overload and political polarisation have created a climate where anxiety and hopelessness can easily take hold.
Research on adolescent mental health in Hong Kong points to several unresolved problems: fragmented services and long waiting times, school stress, and stigma. When youth appear in policy documents, they are often framed as “vulnerable”, “at risk” or “beneficiaries”. Rarely are they described as partners, co-designers or decision-makers in the systems meant to protect their well-being.
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This is not just a feeling problem; it is a systems problem. Policies designed without the voices of youth are more likely to miss emerging stressors (like online harassment, gig economy precarity or exam culture on social media) and less likely to resonate in the places where young people spend their time: in WhatsApp groups, on MTR commutes, gaming servers or at part-time jobs.