When carers need care: Hong Kong welfare group offers emotional support to those feeling stressed during pandemic
- Exhausted and drained from looking after sick husband, housewife regains strength in group therapy
- Social workers at Hong Kong Family Welfare Society help 494 residents through scheme set up during pandemic
May burst into tears recalling the day three years ago when she waited outside a Hong Kong hospital operating theatre while her seriously-ill husband underwent surgery.
Diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, he had a large part of his right thigh muscle removed, replaced by some of his abdominal muscle.
“I was like a soulless body wandering along the corridor in the hospital and I lost my ability to think,” recalled May, who declined to give her full name.
Her husband, now 63, remained in hospital for 15 months undergoing various treatments, with May as his main carer.
After he was discharged, she looked after him at home, accompanying him to his regular hospital check-ups. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, they could only see the doctor online, and her husband had to stay indoors as much as possible to avoid infection.
“I felt so cut off from society,” May, 50, recalled. “The only places I went to were the hospital and supermarket.”
She finally found relief in April this year, when she joined a mental health support scheme started that month by the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society for low-income families during the pandemic.
