May was a sad, tragic month for Hong Kong with more young people taking their own lives. 

There remains much more to be done to prevent these totally unnecessary and avoidable deaths. We need greater joined up thinking within government, for them to reach out to NGOs, academia and other centres of excellence to keep abreast of best practice. We then need their commitment to create and fund a comprehensive Youth Suicide Prevention Plan. Recommendations have already been made. Action must follow through and deliver.

Schools too have a critical on the ground role to play in the destigmatisation of mental health. By educating young people about mental health issues, the feelings they may experience as a teen and how to deal with these emotions and how to ask for help can go a long way to keeping young people safe and would sit well alongside schools’ existing well-being programmes, as two sides of the same coin. The Weez Project would like to see a suicide prevention in plan in each school to complement other student-centred well-being initiatives.