Our key project, mental health peer support group has been running for 3 years now. Today’s article, we want to give you an insight of the demographics with the intention to bring awareness and understanding of mental health to greater audiences. As you might already know, the first support group held its first session on 27th October, 2015 and is held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. Since starting the support group, we have had over 112 attendees! The attende

We will all encounter issues at some point in our lives. It may be the loss of a loved one, financial difficulties, or mental health issues. What I admire about people is the pieces of freedom we are still able to find during times of adversity, and use that space for self-expression and relaxation. When you are tied up, you can either try fighting it, or relaxing, taking a breath and finding your pace again. What do you see in this picture? What do you see in the robes and t

On Tuesday March 20th, Xiaojie, our founder and director, was invited to speak at the Rotary Club’s weekly luncheon. We were joined by 15 participants to discuss the ongoing Candlex Support Meetings at the Beijing Lufthansa Center Kempinski Hotel. Although it was a short gathering, it was, nonetheless, very rewarding. Xiaojie first introduced herself and CandleX, then continued to discuss her teachings and learnings from the support group meetings: who attends, what happens d

Depressed in Beijing? Sometimes we do not know if our bad mood has gone out of the norm and become a depression. Welcome to lesson 2.2: How do I know if I have depression? Please read lesson 2.1 if you need a refresher about what the symptoms of depression are. Today we will be speaking about self-assessment. When we speak about depression within a community or at an event, one of the most frequently asked questions is: “I sometimes feel sad, very stressed, and depressed. But

In our depression support group in Beijing, the new comers often express that they’ve never told anyone about their depression. In our last class, we tackled this “to tell or not to tell” issue. To better help equip you with the skills, in today’s class, we are going to look at “The How and The What” -Xiaojie So you’ve decided to tell

In our CandleX Depression Support Group in Beijing, we have people from different backgrounds coming in to seek support and help. I have noticed one thing that most participants have in common, and that is that that people who are more out going, higher achieving or better connected seem to find it more difficult to tell others about their mental struggle. In the previous two classes, we started the topic of “The Art of Telling”, with the goal to provide some insight on: To t