14th October 2025 - (Hong Kong) Hong Kong begins the school year with its teenagers under visible strain. In September, a territory‑wide survey by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups canvassed 5,551 pupils from Form One to Form Six and found a five‑year high in anxiety. More than one in four students -- 27.8 per cent -- screened in the mild‑to‑severe band, with the average anxiety index climbing to 25.4 from 24.9 in 2022 and 24.1 in 2020. The pressure index averaged 5.9 out of 10, yet the distribution tells the story better than the mean: 42.6 per cent placed themselves at seven to ten, the red zone of everyday life. These are not abstract indicators. The same poll reported 83.4 per cent were more easily nervous or impatient than usual, with 26.9 per cent saying this was frequent or constant, and 73 per cent felt easily upset or frightened. In any corporate risk dashboard, these would trigger a material‑adverse‑change alert.

The gradient steepens with seniority. Anxiety scores rose from 23.6 in Form One to 27.8 by Form Six, an arc consistent with the spiking stakes of the Diploma of Secondary Education. The hierarchy of worries has barely shifted in five years: deteriorating academic results (43.0 per cent), low motivation (36.7 per cent), and heavy homework and exam load (34.8 per cent) dominate the list. The intake valve is widening too. HKFYG's emotion‑related hotline handled 25,842 cases in the twelve months to September, up from 18,920 a year earlier, with 11,509 school‑related contacts and 5,510 from secondary students. Demand is rising; help‑seeking is not. Nearly 60 per cent of students say they rarely or never ask for support, and 65.4 per cent have never sought assistance from anyone. Stigma, competitive settings and fear of missing lessons for counselling are the reasons most often cited by frontline practitioners.

There is corroboration from other sources. Baptist Oi Kwan Social Service surveyed over 1,800 secondary students between November and March and found around 20.8 per cent reporting moderate to very severe stress, up from 17.9 per cent the previous year. Symptoms cohere with the HKFYG profile: irritability over minor interruptions, strain from multiple stressors, and agitation when routines are disturbed. Gender and age effects are visible: boys report higher life satisfaction than girls; junior forms higher than senior forms. The pattern peaks, unsurprisingly, in the exam years.

One study isolates that exam effect with clinical clarity. Commissioned by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service and conducted by the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute between 18th February and 18th April 2025, a survey of 1,017 Form Five and Six students across 13 schools found 41.9 per cent exhibiting symptoms of depression or anxiety. Overlaps are common: 37.4 per cent showed depressive symptoms, 28.6 per cent anxiety symptoms, and nearly a quarter had both. Insomnia afflicted 31.8 per cent. The average stress index hit 7.4 out of 10; one in five students rated their stress at the maximum ten. The qualitative drivers map onto three clusters that any psychologist will recognise: a heightened sense of competition, a "holding‑on" mindset that ruminates on mistakes, and a diminished sense of hope that effort won't materially shift outcomes. The burden falls harder on girls. Most troubling is the paradox the researchers flagged: the more distressed the student, the less likely they are to seek help, especially when family attitudes towards counselling are negative.

Taken together, these findings are not an indictment of high standards. They are a case for disciplined reforms that insulate students from avoidable harm while preserving ambition. The priority is to reroute the system's incentives so that identifying distress early becomes routine, not remedial. Screening is the low‑cost, high‑yield start. Schools already collect health and well-being data through government programmes; embedding brief, validated mental health instruments at term start and mid‑year -- with opt‑in confidentiality protocols and clear referral pathways -- would catch the 20 to 40 per cent at risk before they enter the slide of sleeplessness and withdrawal. HKFYG's supervisor, Andy Chan, has urged proactive screening and individualised counselling; the data justify going further, making screening part of the admissions‑to‑assessment spine in the senior forms, much as schools already do with academic diagnostics.

Second, the city should institutionalise peer support inside classrooms. The evidence based on adolescent mental health is clear: trained peers can lower barriers to disclosure, especially in competitive schools where asking adults for help is seen as weakness. With around 60 per cent of students reluctant to seek formal support, raising the first conversation inside the student cohort is pragmatic. Brief, skills‑based courses can equip volunteers to spot red flags, listen without judgment and signpost help. This is not a delegation of duty to teenagers; it is a bridge that gets more students to professionals sooner.

Third, time and workload need hard edges, not platitudes. The sources of stress students themselves name -- heavy homework and exam load, falling results, motivation dips -- are amenable to management. Senior forms in particular lurch from mock to mock; schools can rationalise assessment calendars, limit simultaneous high‑stakes deadlines, and standardise recovery windows after major exams. None of these steps dilutes rigour; they remove noise so that effort maps to learning rather than to endurance. The HKCSS research documented a "holding‑on" mindset that traps students in rumination. Calibrated feedback cycles, with explicit opportunities to correct and move on, counter that cognitive loop better than exhortations to "try harder."

Fourth, families must be brought into the fix, not as adjuncts but as levers. The HKCSS has framed a "double go easy" approach -- go easier on oneself and on others -- that is less a slogan than a behavioural shift. Parents and teachers pressed by their own anxieties pass them on through language and expectations; helping adults reframe outcomes, plan B and C options, and emphasise process over perfection reduces the ambient pressure students breathe. Companies can meet schools halfway by extending employee assistance programmes to include parenting workshops geared to exam‑year stress. It is not indulgence to protect a 16‑year‑old from adult catastrophising; it is risk management for the household.

Fifth, early intervention for Form Five is non‑negotiable. The HKCSS study makes plain that distress begins to accumulate a year before the DSE. Students arriving in Form Six with two academic years of compounded anxiety are precisely those least likely to seek help. Schools that front‑load support -- timetabled wellbeing check‑ins, study‑skills clinics that include sleep and pacing, short‑form counselling for students who screen above threshold -- will reduce the severity curve before it steepens. Where insomnia is present, cross‑disciplinary clinics pairing social workers with family doctors or Chinese medicine practitioners, as some NGOs are piloting, can treat symptoms without medicalising adolescence.

Sixth, the city's digital fluency should be an ally. Adolescents who avoid formal pathways do engage online. Programmes that meet them where they are -- via Instagram, messaging apps and games -- lower the cost of first contact. HKFYG's surge in hotline traffic suggests demand is there; HKCSS's "Secret Chat" model of equal dialogue through social media adds capacity without preaching. The principle is simple: replace judgement with listening, and conversion to formal help will follow.

The final piece is culture. Competitive cities tell their young that the route to adulthood is a tunnel of tests. But markets also prize resilience, iteration and the ability to learn from error -- traits not nurtured by panic. Hong Kong can keep its standards and change its tone. Schools can publish assessment roadmaps so families can plan, make transparent the supports available and the confidentiality that protects students, and celebrate improvements as publicly as top marks. Universities and employers can broaden the pathways they recognise, which in turn lowers the absolutism that turns the DSE into destiny. None of this abolishes pressure; it distributes it more justly across time and across the adults who set the terms of children's days.

There is no mystery about what to do. The figures tell us whom to help and when. Anxiety indices rising to 25.4, 42.6 per cent self‑rating in the highest stress band, one in five students maxing out at ten out of ten, and over 40 per cent of senior‑form students showing symptoms of depression or anxiety are not the price of excellence. They are warning lights on a dashboard that a prudent city does not ignore. Screening before crises, peers as first responders, timetabled breathing space, family mindset shifts, early Form Five support and digital outreach form a coherent package that costs far less than the losses of dropout, hospitalisation or long‑term scarring.

Hong Kong has the infrastructure -- school social workers, NGO networks, university clinics, public health programmes -- to turn data into practice. What has been missing is the insistence that wellbeing is not an extracurricular. If schools can post mock exam timetables months in advance, they can schedule wellbeing checks with the same predictability. If parents can invest in tutorials, they can invest in learning how not to transmit their anxieties. If policymakers can convene a city around finance and logistics, they can convene it around the mental health of the young who will inherit both.