Hongkongers once believed that, with enough hard work and a touch of the "Lion Rock spirit", anyone could build a life worth living. Yet after living through the city's social movements, many now picture Hong Kong as a place of unhappiness, despair and pressure. But is that really the case?
The trend of the past decade — social movements and a rise in depressive symptoms
According to a study published by the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong and the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, titled "Depression and Post-traumatic Stress During Major Social Unrest in Hong Kong——A 10-year Prospective Cohort Study", the proportion of Hong Kong's population showing depressive symptoms suddenly tripled after the 2014 social movement. More striking still, when another social movement later broke out, that figure rose to more than one in seven people. If the research data reflect the real situation, it would mean that around a million Hong Kong residents were, at the same time, grappling with common depressive symptoms such as insomnia, fatigue and a loss of interest in the things around them — which is a very serious matter. Although the study was designed as a longitudinal one and cannot establish a causal relationship between social movements and the size of the depressed population, a paper by Zimmerman et al. (1999) noted that an individual's sense of powerlessness over the status quo, combined with a lack of confidence in their ability to bring about change in social policy, significantly increases the likelihood of becoming depressed. To make matters worse, Hong Kong people commonly overlook their own mental state. A local paper on common mental disorders (Lam et al., 2015) found that, at the time, only about one in four Hong Kong residents with a common mental disorder would seek professional help — a sign of just how little attention people pay to their own psychological condition.
A knock-on consequence of collective trauma — post-traumatic stress disorder
The same study also points to another psychological symptom that rose over the research period — namely post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Its main symptoms include:
- Sudden fragments of trauma-related memory — when encountering a scene similar to the trauma, intrusive memories may surface
- Anxiety — the sufferer's anxiety stems from a fear of uncertainty, such as avoiding unfamiliar environments
- Hypervigilance — the sufferer continually scans their surroundings for danger, readily feels under threat, and experiences physiological reactions such as a racing heartbeat and sweating
The impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on daily life is just as significant and should not be overlooked. Not only are sufferers affected by traumatic memories over a long period, which can lead to changes in everyday habits, but they also share the same automatic negative thoughts as people with depression, making it hard for their condition to improve noticeably in a short space of time.
Is post-traumatic stress disorder caused by social media? Are people bringing it on themselves, or are they innocent victims?
Changes in the wider social environment may have led to the rise in depression; by comparison, the upward trend in post-traumatic stress disorder is attributed to viewing violent incidents or news related to social movements. The study found that, during the social movement, people who spent more than two hours a day browsing social media or news had a markedly higher likelihood of showing PTSD symptoms than others. Given that the news and online platforms at the time were saturated with graphic, bloody imagery related to the movement — witnessing violence, attacks or social rupture — these are precisely the common triggers of post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, the people who at the time devoted large amounts of time to following news of the movement generally cared more than others about how it would unfold, so it is only natural that they were affected more than others. Therefore, judging from the research findings cited above, simply being exposed to various violent images can affect an ordinary person's emotions, and it is not hard to imagine Hongkongers passively and unwittingly leaving their mental health in a precarious state for an extended period.
How can individuals improve their mental health?
On the emotional level, the anxiety symptoms common to both depression and post-traumatic stress disorder can be eased by improving one's lifestyle to reduce the effects of anxiety. For example, moderate exercise and cultivating regular sleep habits can both help to reduce day-to-day anxiety. However, once certain physiological symptoms appear — such as insomnia or long-term fatigue — one should become more alert to one's psychological state, seek out suitable and trustworthy resources to self-assess how serious these symptoms are, and then decide whether it is necessary to consult a professional.
What does psychology suggest about an individual's mindset?
In psychology there is also the saying "let the past be the past". This does not mean that simply no longer mentioning the negative will let our mental health return to how it was before; rather, after trauma of varying degrees, what we need to focus on is processing the experience and understanding what happened in the past, so as to reach the concept of Post-traumatic Growth. This applies to matters and situations of all sizes in life, helping us to maintain or improve our mental health even in turbulent times.
References
Lam, L. C., Wong, C. S., Wang, M. J., Chan, W. C., Chen, E. Y., Ng, R. M., Hung, S. F., Cheung, E. F., Sham, P. C., Chiu, H. F., Lam, M., Chang, W. C., Lee, E. H., Chiang, T. P., Lau, J. T., van Os, J., Lewis, G., & Bebbington, P. (2015). Prevalence, psychosocial correlates and service utilization of depressive and anxiety disorders in Hong Kong: the Hong Kong Mental Morbidity Survey (HKMMS). Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 50(9), 1379–1388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-015-1014-5
Ni, M. Y., Yao, X. I., Leung, K. S., Yau, C., Leung, C. M., Lun, P., … & Leung, G. M. (2020). Depression and post-traumatic stress during major social unrest in Hong Kong: a 10-year prospective cohort study. The Lancet, 395(10220), 273-284.
Zimmerman, M. A., Ramírez-Valles, J., & Maton, K. I. (1999). Resilience among urban African American male adolescents: A study of the protective effects of sociopolitical control on their mental health. American journal of community psychology, 27(6), 733-751.
Comments
No comments yet — share your thoughts.