Parents key to student mental health: expert

A clinical psychologist warned on Friday that he's noted a link between students' mental health and their relationships with parents. Amos Cheung, a newly-appointed member of the Advisory Committee on Mental Health, said the focus should be on how to improve parents' mental well-being and communication skills, so they can be good role models. Recent Education Bureau figures show that the number of primary and secondary school students diagnosed with mental illness has more than tripled in the past five years. Cheung said he'd noted from his own private practice that students' poor mental health was often related to conflict with family members, and many young people felt that "their conditions were not well understood by their parents ... and] parents have their own agendas to drive". But he stressed that a variety of pressures were involved, including better identification of possible mental health issues. "I believe that actually it's a multiple-factors problem. Well, first, [it] might be an indication that actually parents, teachers are now more sensitive to the mental health conditions of young people, so with improved and increased sensitivity, of course, there will be an increase of these diagnoses," Cheung said. "But, of course, at the same time, it might also mean that, well, the mental health conditions in general might be worsening among these students as well." Cheung said students learned from adults around them. "Children and even adolescents, they are not fully developed and equipped in handling their emotions. Actually they learn from adults. So when the adults around them, if their mental health, if their mental well-being, if their emotional stability are actually already compromised or not established, then of course it will increase their chances of having some of the mental health issues, especially emotionally related," he said. He said the focus should be on how to improve the mental well-being and the communication skills of parents. "Because parents are the major key players in all of these things. So that when parents are already good emotion facilitators and communicators, then of course, the mental well-being and the student's ability to actually handle their emotions, would, of course, improve," he said.