XN000022-1973-05-09 — Page 19

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Wednesday, May 9, 1973

ADMISSION OF MENTAL PRISONERS TO NEW PSYCHIATRIC CENTRE

Adult males detained for observation at the psychiatric observation

unit in the Victoria Remand Centre are now being admitted to the Prisons

Department's Psychiatric Centre in Siu Lam.

But a provision of the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill 1973 introduced

into the Legislative Council today by Dr. the Hon. G.H. Choa, Director of

Medical and Health Services, seeks to extend the category of admissions.

This new psychiatric centre is not to be confused with the Medical

and Health Department's Siu Lam Hospital for the severely mentally retarded,

which shares the same hill in the general area of the Tai Lam Chung Reservoir,

The Prisons Department Centre was completed in November 1972 as a

permanent replacement for the psychiatric observation unit set up on a temporary basis in 1961.

The new centre will in future not only admit men now detained at the

Victoria Remand Centre but also men who, because of their violent or criminal

tendencies, require treatment under conditions of special security.

"They include certain patients presently detained in the Castle Peak

Hospital," Dr. Choa said.

The present Mental Health Ordinance did not provide for the admission

and detention of such persons at the new centre, and the bill was designed to

enable them to be admitted.

But it was not intended to include convicted persons who had been

acquitted by the Full Court on appeal, and who were suffering from mental disorder. These people would be sent to the Castle Peak Hospital along with women and young people under 14.

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