Luna Wong’s death exposes UK’s treatment of international students after family says they accepted money but failed to care for her

HONG KONG, UK (SHROPSHIRE, LONDON), 26 SEPTEMBER 2026 —

When her parents waved her off to study in England they hoped it would be a fresh start the 16-year-old needed after struggling with her mental health in Hong Kong. Instead, 10 months later, she was dead. What went so wrong?

Her pictures were mostly landscapes, ordinary corners of Hong Kong, but she could spot an image nobody else would have seen in the same place. She was an inquisitive kid who enjoyed making people laugh, and was deeply interested in the world around her. Then in 2019, when she was 13, political unrest in Hong Kong , swiftly followed by Covid lockdowns, shrank that world to the size of her bedroom.

For a prolonged period, Luna barely left her family’s flat. School became a screen; friends were only accessible virtually. She stopped sleeping properly, started having panic attacks, and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. When the world opened up after Covid, Luna was too changed to step easily back into it. She was often so anxious she couldn’t attend school, and fell seriously behind. Her psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills.

Later, ADHD medication and an anti-psychotic drug were added to the mix. This heavy combination of prescription drugs left her lethargic in the day – though still often awake at night – and caused weight gain, which distressed her. But Luna retained her curious streak. Keen to understand her own issues better, she read about psychology, ordering textbooks to teach herself about the human mind.

When her friends had problems, she offered advice, and dreamed of becoming a psychologist. But it was hard to see how this would be possible as she struggled to attend school. In 2022, two years into her mental health struggles, Luna had an idea: a move overseas. A close friend had decided to do A-levels at boarding school in the UK, and Luna wanted to go, too.

Luna’s English was fluent – since infancy, her parents had read her bedtime stories in English as well as Cantonese – and she wanted to do an A-level in psychology, which wasn’t on offer in Hong Kong. But there was a bigger reason, too. This could be a fresh start, a way for Luna to decisively open up her world again. At first, her parents, Hilda Leong and Thomas Wong, were apprehensive.

Luna was still fragile. But seeing their daughter excited and motivated about this plan was enough for them to get behind it. “I hoped it would change her life, because it seemed that Hong Kong was very difficult to her at that time,” says Thomas. After consulting Luna’s psychiatrist, who said she was sufficiently recovered to travel, they decided to press ahead.

In September 2022, when Luna was 16, she moved to the UK to study for her A-levels at Wrekin College, a leafy boarding school set on 100 acres of land in Shropshire. Thomas and Hilda discussed Luna’s depression and anxiety with Wrekin before she was admitted, and felt confident the school was equipped to support her needs. Nonetheless, Hilda did not sleep well while her daughter was abroad.

There is an eight-hour time difference between Hong Kong and the UK, and Hilda kept her phone on the bedside table every night in case Luna rang. “I didn’t know how her life was there, and I was nervous about it,” says Hilda. But she reassured herself that this was what Luna wanted. “I told myself, she is growing up, she needs to go out into the world, she has her own life.

I told myself, I will let her go.” As it turned out, they were right to worry. Luna struggled to adjust to life at boarding school. Soon after finishing year 12 at Wrekin College, Luna travelled to London for a summer school placement. It was there that, in July 2023, she took her own life.

What happened to Luna reflects the mental health struggles of many young people, but it is also, in part, a story about money: a private education industry that has grown increasingly reliant on the fees international students bring, propped up by a patchwork of private companies that profit from these children while carrying almost none of the legal obligations that would normally come with caring for them.

Recalling her daughter’s death, Hilda breaks down in tears. “When she left for the UK, I didn’t know she would leave us for ever.” Almost exactly three years after Luna’s death, I speak to Thomas and Hilda via a video call. They are in their apartment in Hong Kong, a framed studio portrait photo of Luna, smiling, on the wall behind them.

Their grief is still raw and unresolved, and Thomas weeps as he tells me it took 14 years to conceive Luna. “We waited a long time to have this child,” he says. When their longed-for baby was born, they gave her the Cantonese name Lok Tung, which translates to “happy child”.

For most of her life this was an apt description: she loved kindergarten and then school, made friends easily, and was doted on at home. “She brought happiness to the whole family,” says Thomas. It is common for people in Hong Kong to adopt an English name. Lok Tung’s first choice was Penguin, after her favourite animal, but she eventually settled on Luna, which is the name she used in the UK.

Luna was close to her parents, and it was painful for them to see her retreat into herself as her mental health worsened. “Sometimes she refused to talk to us,” says Hilda.