Research Paper The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) Volume 7, Issue 3, DIP: 18.01.066/20190703 DOI: 10.25215/0703.066 http://www.ijip.in | July - September, 2019 © 2019, Tsz. W.M; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Impact of Anti-Fugitive Offenders Ordinance Protests on the Mental Health in the Hong Kong General Public Tsz Wah Ma 1 * ABSTRACT We examined the prevalence and predictors of mental distress following the Anti-Fugitive Offenders Ordinance Protests in Hong Kong (start from June 09, 2019). A population- representative sample of 1,206 citizens (mean age = 43.19 years; 51% female) was recruited immediately after the protest by stratified probability sampling. Respondents reported sociodemographics, anxiety symptoms (STAI), depressive symptoms (CES-D), and negative affect (CAS-NA). We found alarming post-protest prevalence of severe probable depression of 10.2% (CES-D >21 among 1206 respondents) and 33.4% of mild to moderate levels of anxiety symptoms (STAI ranged from 41-50). Multivariable regressions revealed that younger age, currently being unmarried, primary education level or below, and monthly household income less than HK$10,000 were positively associated with higher odd of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and negative affect. These findings indirectly reflect the protest‟s potential negative impact on population mental health. It also implied that political/ social movement has greater negative impact on the mental health for individuals with lower level of preexisting socioeconomic resources. Political protests should be given more attention and be taken into account in population-based mental health promotion. Keywords: Anti-Fugitive Offenders Ordinance; psychological distress; mental health; political movements; Hong Kong The Fugitive Offenders Ordinance has become the public attention since the case of a young Hong Kong woman disappeared in Taiwan in February 2018. Taiwanese authorities suspected her boyfriend have killed her and sought his return to Taiwan to face murder charges. But there are no general provisions for the transfer of criminal suspects between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Thus, the government has proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, which would apply to all legal jurisdictions that do not at present have a full-scale cooperation agreement with Hong Kong. However according to a public opinion poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong (2019), it shows that the largest proportion of citizens opposed to this amendment. It is also interesting that both the supporters of the pan-democrats, the moderates and those without any political allegiance also demonstrated a clear opposition stand on the amendment. 1 Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong *Responding Author Received: August 10, 2019; Revision Received: September 29, 2019; Accepted: September 30, 2019