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– An Alumni Story of Dr. Christy Hui Lai Ming 

In the early 1990s, in a schoolyard in Hong Kong, a group of teenage girls sit on a shady bench in the corner. They laugh, huddle together, and then laugh again – their group opening and shutting like a beautiful flower. One starts humming a tune and the others join in with the lyrics, “In your head, in your head,” they chorus. It’s the current popular hit from The Cranberries, who are still the favourite band of one of those teenage girls in the courtyard – Dr. Christy Hui Lai Ming.

For Dr. Hui, the lines of this song were to be particularly significant. In form 6 she chose psychology – the scientific study of the mind and behaviour. Not a predictable choice for a young girl, at that time, but in her words, “Girls like talking and sharing…most of the time I listened to other people. When they had problems, they brought them to me. I’m a good listener.” 

Ready to be challenged further, Christy entered HKU, where as an undergraduate her academic talents were nurtured and fully engaged. She graduated first in psychology and then branched out into psychiatry, completing her PhD in 2009. Her focus was on schizophrenia. 

“Schizophrenia is a difficult, challenging, and complicated illness to study,” Dr. Hui explains. “Sufferers of this disease have hallucinations and delusions that are so real to them, yet for other people they are often difficult to understand.” However, this hasn’t dissuaded her from following a dedicated path of research, especially in relapse prevention, maintenance treatment, and long-term outcomes of early psychosis, for which she has gained much recognition.

Dr. Hui’s many achievements and accolades include receiving the Young Scientist Award twice at the Biennial Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia Research, particularly memorable for the trips to Switzerland to give her presentations. She recalls her trepidation when she took to the stage to present her work to a large audience of experienced, widely respected academics. For other young presenters facing this nerve-wracking experience, she offers the following advice: “With good ideas and good data, people will pay attention.”

Apart from a short internship at Cambridge, Dr. Hui has remained at HKU. She has continued international networking though, and in 2019 she published a paper in Lancet Psychiatry; in the same year she was ranked amongst the top 1% researchers worldwide in her field by citations and also earned the Faculty Outstanding Research Output Award. She now has over 130 peer-reviewed publications under her belt. Dr. Hui has also maintained high standards of teaching at HKU and one of her MPhil students is a winner of the Li Ka Shing Prize, a highly competitive thesis award presented by the Graduate School. Above all, she views her appointment by HKU as Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry as the highlight of her career to date.

Dr. Hui is quick to applaud her mentors – Professor Eric Chen Yu Hai of HKU and Professor William Honer of the University of British Columbia – for their leadership and sound advice, referring to them as her “role models of integrity”.

Apart from scientific discovery and knowledge advances, translation is also an important aspect in academic work. “I participate in the Early Psychosis Foundation, a charitable organisation set up in 2007 to make knowledge and experience gained from research and clinical practice more accessible and to promote high-quality early psychosis intervention programmes in the community,” Dr. Hui says. With the Foundation’s emphasis on outcome improvement and de-stigmatisation, these initiatives have enabled her to reach out into the community in a very practical way.

Dr. Hui‘s favourite coffee kiosk is at the Faculty of Medicine Building, and she may often be seen grabbing a cup before returning to work on her latest projects. Based on local experience and research, she is currently developing an educational tool to help both psychoses patients and their carers to prevent relapses in psychosis. 

“What’s in your head?” the Cranberries’ lyrics ask. Dr. Hui will continue to look for answers to that one. Like the young Christy, she is still a good listener and is still helping others as she constantly seeks ways in which to understand the burdens of psychoses patients and to put sound research into practice.