About Us
About Us
Our Service Highlights
Our Achievements
Our Professional Team
The Department of Psychiatry of United Christian Hospital (UCH) was established in 1974. It was one of the earliest psychiatric units in Hong Kong established within an acute general hospital. Apart from providing in-patient, out-patient and day-patient services, our department pioneered the development of community psychiatric service, in keeping with UCH’s concept of “hospital without walls” which fosters community-oriented patient care. 
 
Our department provides quality and comprehensive cluster-based service to the Kowloon East Cluster (KEC), which serves the populations of Kwun Tong and Tseung Kwan O areas. In-patient services are provided in 2 psychiatric wards (1 ward and 1 female ward) in UCH. Psychiatric Specialist Out-patient Clinics (SOPCs) are located in UCH, Yung Fung Shee Psychiatric Centre (YFSPC), and Tseung Kwan O Hospital (TKOH). Psychiatric Day Hospitals are located in UCH and YFSPC.
 
We adopt a multi-disciplinary service approach involving psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurses, medical social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, peer support workers, speech therapists and Red Cross School teachers. As of 2023, our department consists of 39 full time medical staff (Consultants: 4; Associate consultants: 18; Residents: 17), 147 nursing staff and 92 supporting staff. 
 
In the short future, our department will prepare for a new psychiatric ambulatory centre and 2 gazette wards. We shall strive to optimize service capacity, uphold service quality and retain valuable and devoted staff members for the betterment of the KEC community. 

In-Patient Service

  • 2 acute informal wards (1 for each gender) in United Christian Hospital (UCH), providing 80 beds including:
    56 beds for adults, 16 beds for elderly, and 8 beds for child and adolescent patients

Day-hospital Service

  • Provides a total of 110 places for adult and psycho-geriatric patients and 26 places for child and adolescent patients in UCH and Yung Fung Shee Psychiatric Centre (YFSPC)
  • Adopts a recovery-oriented approach to enhance re-integration of patients into the community, especially for post-discharge patients to allow smooth transition between in-patient and out-patient care
  • Pioneers telecare and on-line therapeutic group programs for patients to receive psychiatric rehabilitation at home
     

Out-patient Service

  • Provides specialty out-patient service to general adult, psycho-geriatric and child and adolescent psychiatric patients
  • Three work sites including UCH, YFSPC and Tseung Kwan O Hospital (TKOH)
     

Psycho-geriatric Team

  • Consists of doctors, nurses, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and medical social workers who work hard to provide out-patient, day-patient, in-patient, and out-reaching services to elderly patients with different mental health needs from dementia, depression to those with severe mental illness who have grown old
  • Works closely with elderly homes in our cluster by providing medical and nursing outreach service to 43 elderly homes and running health talks and workshops with support of our allied health professionals to enhance skills and knowledge of health care workers taking care of elderly residents
  • Runs a Memory clinic jointly with geriatrician in YFSPC to provide multi-disciplinary early intervention to elderly with cognitive deficit. The 2 teams are working together to streamline the outreach service to elderly homes
  • Provides early intervention and assessment to elderly with depression and suicidal risk through the fast track clinic under the Elderly Suicide Prevention Program (ESPP) in YFSPC
  • A medical-social collaborative platform is formed with the 3 Geriatrics teams and District Elderly Community Centres within Kowloon East Cluster (KEC) to facilitate referrals to the Dementia Community Support Scheme (DCSS) and enhance communication with different stakeholders working towards improvement of dementia care 
  • Runs different health education and support groups to carers and patients with special need e.g. elderly with alcohol problem 

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)

  • Provides quality and comprehensive psychiatric in-patient, out-patient and day-patient services to child and adolescent patients under the age of 18 
  • Comprised of multi-disciplinary team members including psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, Red Cross School teachers and medical social workers
  • Provides specially designed training groups to cater for the specific needs of different patient groups e.g. social skills training for autistic spectrum disorder patients, behavioural management for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder patients etc.
  • Liaison with paediatricians on the management of patients with physical and psychiatric comorbidities. Collaboration between Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Paediatrics (COCP) to enhance service for patients with attention deficit & hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
  • Provides support to caregivers of child and adolescent patients through individual and group parental skills training and counseling
  • Collaborates closely with community partners including schools and non-governmental organizations to help mental health promotion and enhance community support to patients and their caregivers 
  • Student Mental Health Support Scheme (SMHSS) Team provides comprehensive, multi-disciplinary services, e.g. school visits, annual screening, platform meetings etc., to enhance communication and collaboration among healthcare, education and social welfare professionals in 42 primary schools and secondary schools
     

Substance Abuse Team

  • Provides comprehensive services to substance abusers including psychiatric assessment and management of substance abuse problems, detoxification services and counseling, treatment and rehabilitation of co-morbid psychiatric and psychological problems, referral services to other medical specialties if necessary. SAC accepts referrals directly from all social workers and doctors 
  • Multi-disciplinary management from psychiatrists and various allied health professionals including nurses, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, and medical social workers is adopted Specially designed treatment programs e.g. motivational interviewing to quit substance, psychological intervention for substance abusers with sleep problems, cognitive rehabilitation for substance abusers with cognitive complication have been developed 
  • Close collaboration with community partners e.g. Counselling Centre for Psychotropic Substance Abusers (CCPSA), to identify at-risk substance abusers for earlier referral and treatment, facilitate community support and reintegration for rehabilitation

Neuromodulation Team

  • Provides protocol-driven Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to selected in-patients and out-patients 
  • ECT and TMS sessions are regularly available to provide acute-phase and maintenance-phase treatment to patients in need
  • Close liaison with other professionals e.g. anaesthesiologists, physicians, dentists etc. to formulate individualised ECT treatment plan for patients with complex physical conditions
     

Community Psychiatric Services (CPS)

  • Comprised of Intensive Care Team (ICT), Personalised Care Programme (PCP), Standard Community Psychiatric Services (Standard CPS) and Community Psychiatric Team (CPT)
  • Provides high-quality community care and support to patients and their carers in order to enhance their mental stability in the community and promote community re-integration
  • Covers a wide range of support for psychiatric patients in need of community care
  • Close monitoring of high-risk cases e.g. patients under Intensive Care (IC) and Special Care (SC) categories in the Special Care System (SCS) and Conditional Discharge (CD) 
  • Provides outreach service to local rehabilitation facilities
  • Collaborates with community care partners to provide mental health education and promotion in the community 

Consultation-liaison Service

  • Comprised of consultation-liaison psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses
  • Provides timely and high-quality psychiatric consultation services to other specialties and Accident & Emergency Departments of UCH, TKOH and HHH
  • Provides a wide range of psychiatric evaluation and treatment in a general hospital setting to different patient groups including adults, children and adolescents, elderlies, peri-natal women, substance and alcohol abusers etc.
  • Tele-Psychiatry
    Establishment of new tele-psychiatry services for the delivery of mental health services during COVID-19, including tele-consultation for psycho-geriatric outreach service, virtual visiting in psychiatric wards, individual and group therapies in the psychiatric day hospital etc.
  • Substance abuse service obtained sponsorship from Beat Drugs Fund 2021 for a 3-year project to strengthen medical intervention by adopting innovative technology- transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on craving control and motivation to abstinence for drug abusers who were complicated by severe mental illness. This project was expected to benefit a target of 180 high-risk patients
  • Collaboration with Department of Pharmacy to streamline medication dispatching and monitoring mechanisms, and to provide medication education to patients to enhance their understanding and treatment adherence

2022

  • Dr YIP Kim Wai (Associate Consultant) was selected for KEC Merit Young Achiever Award 2022
     

2021

  • Kowloon East Cluster (KEC) Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service was selected for KEC Outstanding Team Award 2021
     

2020

  • Dr WAN Yuen Ting (Associate Consultant) was selected for KEC Young Achiever Award 2020
     

2019

  • Dr WONG Mei Cheung (Consultant) was selected for Hospital Authority Young Achiever Award 2019 and KEC Young Achiever Award 2019
     
Our professional team is comprised of multi-disciplinary professionals including psychiatrists, nurses, and allied health professionals including clinical psychologists, medical social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, peer support workers, speech therapists and Red Cross School teachers. Our team provides quality services to patients of Kowloon East Cluster in United Christian Hospital, Yung Fung Shee Psychiatric Centre and Tseung Kwan O Hospital.