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Wednesday, March 29, 1972
OPENING OF IRENE HOUSE ANNEXE
Achievements Of Mental Health Association Of Hong Kong
Mr. Thomas C.Y. Lee, Deputy Director of Social Welfare, today
opened an annexe to the Irene House maintained by the Mental Health
Association of Hong Kong for discharged mental patients in the Wong Tai
Sin Resettlement Estate.
A total of 175 discharged patients from the Castle Peak Hospital
had taken up temporary residence in Irene House. They had either had no
home to return to, or were unable to go back to their domiciles because
of physical or emotional problems.
Mr. Lee said the House, a half-way house first pioneered by
Dr. Irene Cheng, an educator and an ardent mental-health worker, had been
instrumental in seeing 124 former patients through the last leg of their
rehabilitation.
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Without the House now enlarged with an annexe he felt it
would have been "open to doubt if some of these mental patients could
have been discharged at all, even though they might be certified fit for
discharge."
Mr. Lee told an audience of social workers and community leaders
that the period of stay in Irene House was an average of three months. Some
patients were able to find employment after a few weeks, others took longer.
Still others came on week-end parole from the hospital to have their
suitability for discharge tested,
/He commended....