The University of Hong Kong's Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention released on Sept 12 a study that shows the suicide rate among Hong Kong's employed adults averaged 7.24 per 100,000 people in 2010 (the latest figures available). Nurses topped the list with 9.5 per 100,000, followed closely by police officers' 9.4 per 100,000.

The center's experts surmised that because nurses and police officers are in the business of helping others, they are more reluctant to seek help from others when they run into mental health or other medical problems.

The truth, however, goes deeper than that.

Nurses know too well that once they seek help in public hospitals, their records (such as anxiety, depression) will be available to thousands of people in the medical profession as long as those people know how to use a computer. This lack of privacy plays a key role, in my humble opinion, in discouraging mentally sick nurses from seeking help. (Who on earth would want thousands of Hong Kong people to know that they suffer from depression or other kinds of mental illness? Obviously, the simple answer is absolutely no one.)

The case with police officers is plain for everyone to see. It's not simply due to the fact that they are in the business of helping others that they don't want to look for help when they run into mental health or other medical problems themselves. The main deterrent factor is that once they seek help, almost everybody in the police force would know that they have a problem. About 44 percent of those police officers who killed themselves in recent years had gambling-debt issues. They didn't seek help because they didn't want their superiors to know that they had serious gambling-debts since they might risk being dismissed from the force.

To reduce HK's suicide rate we must work hard to protect people's privacy. Suicide is a subject that many treat as taboo. But it's time we woke up to the cruel reality. We must try to find ways to safeguard people's privacy in order to pull people back from the cliff of suicide. (I know this well-guarded secret well because a close relative of mine is a senior medical person in Hong Kong).

The government is well advised to set up a task force to look into how people's mental state may be restricted only to a few medical professional people (such as limiting to hospital directors and deputy directors only) once people in need visit a public hospital or clinic. Only when their privacy is guaranteed will more nurses and police officers (and teachers whose suicide rate ranked the third) be willing to get medical help.

It is not a shame to see a psychiatrist when people have anxiety or depression. People would be more willing to visit psychiatrists as long as their visits are known to only a handful of medical experts. About 30 percent of those who committed suicide in 2010 were employed people. Many people in the work force suffer from stress, heavy workload or working on shift duties (few chances for dating or meeting friends, for example). Consequently people do develop problems. They should seek help and fear not that their records will be spread public to every corner of Hong Kong. Protecting people's privacy with a workable mechanism is extremely important if we want to see Hong Kong's suicide rate among employed people decline.

I am a university teacher and I am sad to see that 7.35 per 100,000 of my colleagues took their lives, higher than the average of 7.24 per 100,000. Are our workloads less heavy and our mental health better than those of nurses and police officers? Of course not. Fewer of us would kill ourselves because we are more willing to go to seek medical help when we are sick. I will bet that less than 1 percent of teachers know that once they visit a public hospital, their records are known to thousands of medical staff in all of Hong Kong's public hospitals. I say this not to discourage my colleagues from getting help when they are sick. I encourage them to get help and they should.

I urge strongly the government to set up some mechanisms to protect the privacy of those who seek medical help.

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

(HK Edition 09/15/2012 page3)