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 g...

I've been running the CandleX Mental Health Group for 2.5 years now! Tom from TheBeijinger interviewed me to get an idea of some of the mental health issues experienced by expats in Beijing, and the snippets of support and recovery. 

I really enjoyed this interview. It helped me to categorize my thoughts, and to have a better understanding of what this group means to the community. 

I hope you can share this post because when so...

Going through depression can feel like the loneliest place in the world, especially when you live in hectic Beijing. For many, they are living alone here fresh off the boat from overseas, without a sufficient support system. Others are going through significant life changes, such as divorce or job loss, without a space to check in with themselves. The stigma around mental health here in China means people often don’t feel like...

Moving to a new country, going through a breakup, losing a job, or living with mental conditions are very challenging. Yet, there’s no reason to suffer alone when one can choose to join hands with others and let the power of connection and group support encourage and heal us.

In the absence of such social support in Beijing, CandleX established the peer support group in October, 2015, with the goal to provide psychosocial suppo...

Since 2015, CandleX has been hosting annual Mental Health Support Groups. It is a vital part of our initiative because the large scale of it contributes to raising awareness for people with depression, mania and severe anxiety. After two years of biweekly support group meetings, we come to our second annual group-review. We invite you to take a look at our review

of the first 2 years!

Here’s a letter from Xiaojie,founder of Cand...

CandleX has been hoping to establish a mental health support group ever since the beginning of our project. We want to provide a space where people who are going through a difficult time can meet to offer and receive support.

It isn’t easy to set up this kind of group. We don’t have a sufficient budget for such activities and it is a constant struggle to pay for the required media publicity to enable those in need to find out a...