By Jenny Chu | Program Coordinator in Yunnan
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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