XN000022-1972-03-29 — Page 76

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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.

——

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....