SING LEE, M.D.

After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, Dr. Sing Lee became a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, a position he held until 1992 when he became a Senior Lecturer. In 1996, he moved to the United States to take up an appointment as a Freeman Foundation Fellow in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He subsequently took up a lectureship in the same department. On his return to Hong Kong, Dr. Lee resumed the position of general adult psychiatrist in the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University. In this role, he is actively involved in clinical work, the supervision of psychiatric trainees and postgraduate students, in undergraduate teaching and, above all, in research. His research bridges the gap between biomedicine and the social sciences and includes cultural and public health psychiatry, eating disorders, Chinese women’s health, psychiatric nosology, neurasthenia, mood disorders, lithium therapy, discrimination, suicide and areas of mental health and social change in China. Dr. Lee is internationally known for his cross-cultural psychiatric research of neurasthenia and eating disorders in Chinese society. In 1999, he was appointed Director of the Hong Kong Eating Disorders Center and in 2001 became Director of the Hong Kong Mood Disorders Center. In 2000, he launched the Family Link Mental Education Program, which educates families of the mentally ill on how to cope with mental illness and lobbies for better treatment. Dr. Lee is a leading media spokesman on mental health issues in Hong Kong, and is proactive in lobbying for equal opportunities for the mentally ill.

Dr. Lee has served on numerous committees and advisory boards including the Eating Disorders Work Group of the DSM-IV (1992 to 1994) and the Research Committee of the Action Committee Against Narcotics (1995 to 1997). Currently, he is Chair of the Classification, Diagnostic Assessment and Nomenclature Section of the World Psychiatric Association. He is also Chief Scientific Advisor to a 5,000-subject epidemiological study of mental disorders, which is part of the World Mental Health Survey 2000, a large-scale, cross-national study initiated by the World Health Organization and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr Lee is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK) and of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. He was a Forum Fellow at the World Economic Forum 2000, Davos, Switzerland.

Dr. Lee is a reviewer to a number of prestigious journals including Psychological Medicine, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Social Science and Medicine. He is an associate editor of Transcultural Psychiatry, a member of the international editorial advisory board of Anthropology and Medicine, and serves on the editorial boards of seven Chinese journals. He has published one book and over 150 journal articles, book reviews, commentaries, and letters in peer-reviewed journals.