ABSTRACT
Mental health workers function within certain political, social, and economic contexts in a society. This chapter introduces these contexts by giving an account of the development of mental health services in Hong Kong, a critique of the mental health services, and an explanation of the difficulties faced by mental health workers when delivering services to their clients in Hong Kong. The second part of this chapter is devoted to discussing the concept of clinical case management and how this concept has been developed to work with two broadly differentiated groups of people with mental illness: individuals with mild mental illness and individuals with chronic mental illness. Differences exist in the nature and skills of clinical case management for people suffering from mild mental illness and those suffering from chronic mental illness. Generally speaking, whereas the emphasis for working with people with chronic mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia) centers on rehabilitation and supportive counseling, the focus of intervention for people suffering from mild mental illness (e.g., anxiety disorders) revolves around cure and in-depth, therapeutic counseling.
