Mental Health Support & Education for Chinese Kids

Twenty social workers and six mental health education teachers participating in CWEF's Mental Health Support & Education program in Luquan County, Yunnan, recently attended a mental health exchange.  The exchange took place at a very large and influential mental health center in the region that services around 30,000 people each year!

In order to improve their professional competence and practical skills related to mental health education,  CWEF social workers and teachers learned recent best practices in mental health during this event.  They also collaborated with peers to brainstorm solutions to practical challenges within their usual work environments and participated in team-building excercises intended to encourage collaboration among professionals in their daily work. 

In this way, staff for the CWEF mental health education program addressed challenges facing Luquan county specifically, such as: insufficient teacher expertise and the lack of a curriculum system.  Staff received practical suggestions like creating differentiated curricula, focusing on the essential needs of their clients, and sharing community resources.  Attendees reached concensus through discussion that it is better to start mental health initiatives, even if they are imperfect, and work to optimize and perfect them later on. 

As far as mental health practice, workshops at the event explored the connection between emotions, cognition and behavior.  The connection was explained this way:  

Emotions are the core foundation, influenced by multiple factors such as the upbringing environment, personality, and values; cognition is a thought pattern formed on the basis of emotions, determining how one views and judges things; behavior is the outward manifestation, driven jointly by emotions and cognition. The three are intertwined and inseparable.

In our work, we must set aside impatience, slow down to listen to the genuine feelings of service recipients, and accurately identify their underlying needs, rather than rushing to provide solutions.

Practitioners should lead by example, treating others with a positive, inclusive, and respectful attitude, and using positive words and actions to subtly guide clients toward natural changes in their emotions, cognition, and behavior.

In seminars, a lot of emphasis was placed on creating an emotionally connected, safe, and welcoming space for clients. A space where the emotional needs of clients can be met without too heavy of an emphasis on fixing or changing the client. 

The staff learned a lot through this mental health exchange!  We look forward to seeing the staff, with renewed energy and vision, make use of their new skills as they continue to teach mental health education to students in China!  Thank you so much for your generous support of this program.  Mental health affects every day of our lives and is often an area that gets overlooked.  So thank you for helping to ensure this uncommon program is available to students in Yunnan.  We hope that everything they learn through our programs will continue to bless them in many different ways over their lifetimes!

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Do you look forward to falling in love? What do you think falling in love will be like?  These are some questions, Xiaochun, a teacher at Tuanjie Town Middle School in Yunnan asked students during a CWEF-sponsored mental health class this September. 

Teacher Teng talked in depth with students about how to have healthy romantic relationships.  Together they discussed the difference between liking someone and loving someone:

• Liking: Refers to mutual empathy, which includes a positive assessment, appreciation and respect for each other. 

• Loving: Includes a need for intimacy, dependency, and a tendency to help each other. It also has a sense of exclusively loving that one person. 

 The class also discussed 5 principles of healthy romance:

1. Expectations: Clarify the emotional expectations for yourself and others. 
2. Timing: early adulthood (18-25 years old) is an important time for establishing intimacy, students should reserve their best selves for the right person. 
3. Distance: students discussed four types of interpersonal distance, so that they can understand the importance of maintaining appropriate interpersonal boundaries 
4. Capacity to Love: students were encouraged to first learn to love themselves, and develop the ability to understand and work well with others before seeking out a romantic relationship
5. Alignment of Values: students reflected of the importance of sharing the same values with a significant other 

Concluding Message:

Always believe in love and look forward to it; have the confidence to love yourself, and also cultivate the ability to love others. Love can be perfect or have regrets. Whether it is the luck of love at first sight or the sadness of unrequited love, both are part of youth. It is hoped that students can face the gains and losses in relationships with a positive attitude, learn to grow through love, and welcome the beautiful future of being well-matched with a better version of themselves. 

THANK YOU for partnering with CWEF and supporting the mental health of young people in China!  Because of you, these students have a better chance of enjoying healthier romantic relationships and making wise choices about love both now and in the future.

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• Meet a Chinese student that received a CWEF scholarship.
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• See the impact donors like you have had through CWEF over time.