Counselling Cornr newsletter – November 2023
Read the Myanmar version of this newsletter on our website
Topic of the month – Toxic Relationships
The whole month our counsellors are talking during Tuesday Live and on our social media about toxic relationships. The kind of relationship that makes one person feel down. What to do, if you realise your own behaviour is not positive for others? How to deal with family situation? What causes toxic behaviour and how to change?
To get an answer on all your questions, join us each Tuesday at 7 pm for Facebook Live or watch the recorded messages in our video library: https://www.youtube.com/@CounsellingCorner/videos
Mental Health Centre project
Mental Health Centre project
Mental health is important for everybody in Myanmar. Counselling Corner is starting a program to train individual people to become a counsellor and set up their own “Seit Mate Swe” mental health centre in order to reach and support more people.
As a trained counsellor you will be able to:
Give general information on how to stay mentally strong
Give preventive emotional / art / clay workshops in groups
Give individual counselling (under supervision)
Interested? We will invite you to follow step by step our program (after each step you can apply for the next step):
Step 1: Join an emotional workshop (online – 2 hrs) or art / clay workshop (in person – 2 hrs)
Step 2: Follow 3-days psycho-social support training (online)
Step 3: Follow Basic Counselling Skills Training (10 days * 2 hrs + home assignments) – online
Step 4: Follow Intermediate and Advanced Counselling Skills Training (18 days * 2 – 2,5 hrs + home assignments) – mostly online
Step 5: Help your community and start your own mental health centre
What we offer:
Free and interactive training
Practical advice to start your practise
Marketing support and supervision sessions
What we expect:
Active participation
Finishing home assignments
Intention to start mental health centre as a social business that generates a small income (online / pop-up / face-to-face, full time or part-time etc all possible)
Criteria:
Interested in mental health
Good listening skills
Interested in people
Open-minded
Intention to work in counselling in the future
Contact Seit Mate Swe team to sign up for the first step and stay informed
Google form link
Telephone number
Facebook messenger
ENHANCING EMOTIONAL WELL BEING : The Case Study Of Mental Health Workshops In Cyclone Affected Area
We are very proud of our counsellor Hein Htet Lwin Oo, who’s case study was recently published on PsychologyMatters.Asia. The study explores the impact of implementation of emotional well-being workshops in disaster affected areas in Myanmar after Cyclone Moca devastates the coastal region in May 2023. The community in the area has already been struggling and grappling with many crises and challenges due to man-made disasters and faced an additional blow from nature. In order to address the mental and emotional well-being of people in the area, international non-government organization and Counselling Corner, a mental health service in Myanmar with the aim to improve the well-being of people, worked together and organized emotional well-being workshops using art and clay as medium. Underpinning various theories, workshops are designed to improve mental health awareness, emotional expression and community resilience. The workshop outcomes, from the feedback of participants, indicates the increasing mental and emotional well-being, sense of community and increase in mental health awareness. This case study highlights the need for intervention in disaster affected areas and impact of such interventions and the need to fill the gap in mental health care.
Read the whole article here: PsychologyMatters.Asia
Memory Game
Many people worldwide know the classic card game “memory” (also called Matching Pairs) often depicting fruits, animals or household items. Counselling Corner designed a Myanmar memory game depicting emotions. This encourages people to talk about their emotions or consider how they feel in their home / school / work situation. It’s a fun game to do with others, so we keep it light.
The 24 emotions are developed by our counsellors and the drawings by a local Yangon girl we often work with. Each emotion is mentioned in English and in Myanmar language (so total 48 cards) and it comes with an explanation and in a cute box.
Why we decided to design these?
Bit of a long story; since the start of Covid, Counselling Corner has held emotional workshops (online and in person) for over 10.000 people in Myanmar. The feedback is very good, and we have asked the Dutch University of applied science to do a study on the effectiveness of the workshops.
One of the main conclusions: ” An Independent t-test analysis showed a significant difference in experiencing the ability to perceive emotions by the group which has undergone the intervention at least once during three weeks before filling in the survey.”
This means that Myanmar people benefit from learning how to express emotions, articulate emotions and have more knowledge and awareness about the different emotions anybody feels.
Counselling Corner designed a memory game focused on identifying emotions by finding 2 of the same emotions.
Interested? Visit Counselling Corner bookshop at our centre, buy the game from Hla Day
Watch explanation of the game in Myanmar language on our YouTube
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qdVuDNn8sQ
Mental health at the work floor
We are extremely grateful that we got the chance to work with 1800 garment factory workers around Yangon and let them talk about emotions through emotional and art workshops. We can conclude that the assumption “our workers don’t care about mental health” or “blue collar workers don’t understand this” is untrue.
We experienced a very high rate of active participation, freely showing emotions and crying and also saw heartwarming efforts to show empathy towards colleagues.
The program was part of a campaign of videos and animation created to reach over 20.000 garment industry workers. One of the animation videos can be seen here: Animation for garment workers
Read the Myanmar version of this newsletter on our website
Please do share / like and contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on the above or want to know more about our services. We want to make it easier for people to talk about mental well-being and we need help from all organizations in Myanmar to discuss mental well-being openly with your team and work on improving it.
For inquiries, please contact us:
Email: contact@counsellingcornermyanmar.com
Phone: 09 785 074 173, 09 784 509 916