Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A12

July 5, 2014

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Feature » District Special

Psychologist finds joy in crisis counseling

By Qu Zhi | July 5, 2014, Saturday | Print Edition

EVERY day from 10am to 9pm, Liu Yanhua and her team wait for their psychological hotline phones to ring, so they can provide free services to those in need.

Her consultation center on E’shan Road in Pudong New Area has helped some 10,000 people suffering traumatic incidents or feeling lost since it opened in May 2012.

“I love my job, which fulfills my life,” the 40-year-old psychologist tells Shanghai Daily. “Psychology changes people’s life and even their views of the world. Although, I am a very small part in this society, I do what I can to help people.”

After graduating from college, Liu got a job in marketing while she spent her spare time volunteering to provide comfort and encouragement to people suffering depression and mental issues. She went to different communities and gave lectures about the right attitude toward psychological counseling.

In 2003, Liu quit her well-paid job so she could devote her life to being a psychologist. At that time, hardly anyone would go for consultation because of the stigma — many people thought only a lunatic would go for psychological help.

With no patients, young Liu could not make a living with her meager payment of 500 yuan (US$81) a month.

“It’s not that I have never wavered in my decision. But whenever I thought about quitting, it was heartbreaking. And thanks to the support from my family, I got through the hardships,” she says.

From her start as an assistant psychologist to becoming an expert with rich clinical experience and what she says is a cure rate of better than 80 percent, Liu has come a long way.

For Liu, a qualified psychological consultant needs more than a license. It requires massive reading and a big heart. Every night at 10 o’clock, Liu picks up a book and starts reading, a habit she has stuck to for a long time.

“I read everything — philosophy, culture, politics, science and more — from which I know how diverse the world is,” Liu says.

Reading is the instrument of her modesty and wide vision. “It makes me have more respect to all of my patients,” she says.

As a psychologist, Liu has to face enormous negative emotions everyday. “The love and appreciation of life is crucial for a psychologist. I am a pessimistic person and I never think that it’s a wonderful world. But I work on the positive, creating beauty to experience life,” Liu says.

When choosing psychology as a life-long career, Liu never treated it as an instrument to pay the bills. Before opening her own consultation center, she often had conflicts with her employers.

“In the past, some psychological center in Shanghai tended to make the course of treatment longer to charge more money. And the whole industry was a bit disappointing,” Liu recalls.

She set up the psychological consultation center with support from the Women’s Federation of Pudong New Area, and together they introduced a hotline dubbed “Happy Family” for free consultation.

Perhaps the hardest thing her center must deal with is parents’ loss of a child. When it’s an only child, as is usually the case in today’s China, the loss can be catastrophic for parents, especially when they are too old to have another child. Today in Shanghai, there are thousands of shidu families, which mean parents who have lost their only child.

Liu and her team are paying great attention to this phenomenon and trying to extricate these parents out of their plight.

“Some psychological institutions will get the shidu families together, where they complain about their lives and eventually end up in anger over the one-child policy. This is not the way to solve the problem,” Liu says.

Recently, a 50-year-old retired woman who insisted on anonymity called the hotline for help. Her son had just died from kidney disease and her husband was paralyzed, confined to his bed. She isolated herself from all her friends and relatives and felt her life was cursed.

Liu and her team tried various methods to help the woman to change her attitude by accepting others’ help and trying to be more positive toward life. They went to the woman’s home and offered one-on-one counseling so she could talk about her pain.

“We also offer small gatherings of shidu families to share the problem, giving advice and supporting each other. And from the gathering they know they are not the only miserable family in the world,” Liu says. “We want to help these people to find new goals in their lives.”

The psychological consultant center is one of many community venues, including a children’s library; charity boutique for second-hand clothing, accessories and housewares; a free photo studio for people aged 50 and over and others.

Supported by the district government, these venues offer subsidies and beneficial policies such as reduced rent to help make the area a more friendly community.

FeatureDistrict Special


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend