Hospital Authority - Mental Health Direct
To strengthen mental health service, the Hospital Authority (HA) enhanced mental health hotline service with the launch of Mental Health Direct, to deliver professional advice over telephone through information and communication technologies, clinical information system, and assessment protocols to better support service users in the community.
Service Scope
Mental Health Direct provides round-the-clock mental health enquiry hotline for patients with mental illness, their caregivers, and the general public, including:
- Provide advice for general enquiries regarding medication and psychiatric services
- Provide appropriate information on disease management and community psychiatric resources
- Refer to HA mental health service when appropriate
- Provide advice on management of emergency situations based on protocol-driven risk assessment
Through referral from Community Psychiatric Services, the Telecare Services strengthens community care for patients with mental illness with the following services:
- Provide professional and personalised psychiatric assessment and follow-up
- Provide information and advice on disease management
- Provide reminder for psychiatric follow-up and education on medication management
- Provide support to service users and their caregivers in case of emergency or mental state deterioration
HA optimises the services of Psychiatric Specialist Out-patient Clinics by proactively contacting defaulted patients to understand the reasons of absence and helping them reserve new follow-up appointments, as well as providing psychiatric advice to enhance their treatment compliance in order to reduce future default rate and shorten the time for rescheduling of appointment with the aim of early relapse intervention and preventing disease deterioration.