Counselling Cornr newsletter – March 2024
Dear Counselling Corner,
Read the Myanmar version of this newsletter on our website
We are approaching the Thingyan festival which is a good time for reflection. What did I achieve during the last 12 months, what are the plans for the new year and which things should I be grateful for? The New Year’s holiday (13 – 16 April 2024) is a good time for a big clean-up. Throw out old things, ideas, and habits, and start refreshed!
Reflection Journal
Counsellors Hsu Lei Nanda and May Phyo Thu together with the input of other counsellors and colleagues have been working consciously over the last months to produce a Myanmar language reflection journal. It’s a 299-page book divided over 52 weeks to help you write down your feelings, your achievements, and what you have been grateful for and consider what you are planning to do in the next week and the next months. It’s an excellent tool to keep your own mental well-being in balance and helps you to reflect on the past weeks and look forward. The journal also includes tips in Myanmar on how to stay mentally strong and how to support others.
The reflection journal is available for just 26.000 Kyats at Counselling Corner bookshop, pass by in person at our centre or order by phone, email, Facebook messenger or Viber / WhatsApp. An ideal gift for loved ones or for staff for Thingyan.
For companies, we currently offer a free webinar for staff if you order a minimum of 40 books. During the webinar our counsellors explain mental health, how to use the journal and answer questions. A perfect way to start the new year.
Staff anxieties – how to deal with it
The last month we have seen many companies and staff trying to grasp the consequences of the new conscription law. As a company you can support staff by helping them to put their thoughts in order and clear the limbic system of their brain. This limbic system is the part of your brain where emotions are stored and if this part is overloaded there is no more space for logical thinking in your brain. In other words; when you’re overwhelmed with strong emotions like fear, anxiety, grief, feeling helpless etc, you have less capacity in your brain to perform logical thinking activities.
The best way to clear the limbic system is by talking about your feelings and sharing emotions with others. Many Myanmar staff are not used to expressing emotions and therefore it’s good to practise this in small groups of 20 staff members. Often, just 1 session is enough to realise talking helps to clear their mind.
Counselling Corner Myanmar has been holding this kind of emotional workshops for thousands of blue-collarwhite-collar and white collar staff in Myanmar and the engagement of team members has been fantastic. The workshops can be done online or in person.
Call our team (09-785074173) to plan an emotional workshop before Thingyan as we still have a few slots left.
Live Talk Event by Paula Gil Baizan at Counselling Corner –
“Send me your most difficult patient”
Counselling Corner organised a very interesting and insightful talk with Paula Gil Baizan presenting a case study on change and patient-centred approach in a Mexican hospital. During the Live talk event we dived deep into the world of creating change in places where change seems impossible.
About the talk:
Dr. Angeles Baizan, a family therapist, started talking to glaucoma patients in the 90’s from a small room in a hospital in Mexico. The most difficult challenge was convincing doctors the presence of a psychologist was helpful, both for patients and doctors, she often said “Send me your most difficult patients”.
After a while, the hospital noticed an improvement in healing patterns from patients and they changed to look at a more holistic approach of patient’s well-being that included physical as well as mental well-being.
During the talk, Paula shared experiences, best practises and case studies. Afterwards, she led an open discussion with all participants on how to integrate mental health services in Myanmar and discussed how to create change in places where change seems impossible.
The hybrid talk was well attended by Myanmar professional counsellors, people working in medical field and others interested in creating change.
Something Meaningful Consulting
Opening in Mandalay: Adore Mental Well-being and counselling.
We would like to congratulate Ma Tweety with opening her own mental health centre in Mandalay, based at the Royal Hospital. Ma Tweety finished Advanced Counselling Skills Training (batch 10) with Counselling Corner in November 2022. She then continued to get more practical experience and improved her skills while working as a co-facilitator during workshops. After additional in-person- training by Counselling Corner counsellors and meetings with the hospital directors, she decided to open Adore Mental Well-being and counselling.
The aim of the centre is to provide art and clay workshops to help people to stay mentally strong, just like Counselling Corner has been done in Yangon. The centre also starts giving individual consultation sessions and counselling sessions in person and online.
Together with Bhone Tint and May Phone, 2 other former students of Counselling Corner, Ma Tweety is providing mental health services in Mandalay, just as Counselling Corner does in Yangon.
The team in Mandalay gets weekly supervision from Counselling Corner senior counsellors to ensure continuous improvement of services and ensure the highest quality individual counselling. Adore Mental Well-being and counselling also has the possibility to refer clients to Counselling Corner if there is a need it.
Survey on depression levels in Myanmar by Cambridge University
Cambridge University recently published a report on depression and anxiety levels in Myanmar. They fielded an online non-probability survey of 7720 Burmese adults aged 18 and older during October 2021 and asked mental health and demographic questions and used the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 to measure probable depression and anxiety in respondents.
Their conclusion “The widespread symptoms of anxiety and depression we observed demonstrate the need for both continuous surveillance of the current situation and humanitarian interventions to address mental health needs in Burma.”
The research found consistently high rates of probable anxiety and depression combined (60.71%), probable depression (61%) and probable anxiety (58%) in the sample overall, as well as across demographic subgroups. The full Cambridge report is available here.
Counselling Corner has been doing its own surveys with a focus on depression using PHQ-9 and surveyed thousands or respondents in October 2022 and then again in April 2023 and in Feb 2024 in cooperation with the Dutch University of applied sciences. Results of Counselling Corner’s surveys are very similar to Cambridge research and show the importance of mental health care nationwide.
Counselling Corner looked at the percentage of people that self-assess being moderate to severely depressed (not included mild depression as Cambridge) and the results were high:
Oct 2022 51,8% of the Myanmar population scores moderate to severely depressed.
April 2023 45,6% of the Myanmar population scores moderate to severely depressed.
This is higher than Ukraine (40,7%) or among US adults during the COVID-19 pandemic (27,8%) yet lower than Gaza at the moment (71%)
People with depression are looking for a way out which is often drugs, alcohol, gambling, violence including GBV) and self-harm. Symptoms we currently see in Yangon and other areas of the country.
Get in touch for more information on our surveys.
Bookshop
It’s not always easy to find books on mental well-being in Myanmar and as part of the ongoing professional development for our counsellors and for students, we have books for sales at our centre in downtown Yangon. Over the last months, Counselling Corner has produced a memory game about emotions, a reflective journal and a clay and art basket that are available as well at our bookstore.
Interested? Have a look at our website to see what’s in store, delivery is possible: https://counsellingcornermyanmar.com/shop-corner
Topic of the month – Relationship Issues
During the last weeks, the weekly Facebook Live talk on Tuesdays and the free workshops on Wednesday have been about Relationship Issues – Romantic/ Work/ Social – Are you a red flag? Counsellors talked about types of relationships, and about problems caused by your attachment styles. We also discussed common relationship challenges, how to being in a repetitive circle of the same problem and we discussed “Marking it work: Healthy Relationship”.
Want to see the talk again or missed one of the episodes? Have a look at our YouTube channel for all talks https://www.youtube.com/@CounsellingCorner
And follow us on Facebook to join the next Facebook Live, ask questions and sign up for the free Wednesday workshop to discuss the topic: https://www.facebook.com/counsellingcornermyanmar
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