On 20th May 2017, CandleX ran a mental health workshop for Chinese students who are soon to go to top universities in the USA.
It’s reported that around 450,000 Chinese went overseas for education in 2014 (2015年出国留学发展状况调查报告，2015). Many are teenagers that are moving overseas for the first time in their life, at the stage of transitioning into their early adult life.
Although it’s exciting, many have been experiencing tough times, especially their first year in school in a foreign country. In order to prepare the students for possible adversities for their life abroad, we were invited to run a workshop for the 2017 students by ESC to give them the knowledge to understand these new challenges, and the tools to respond to them. This is the second time we ran the workshops for ESC (Elite Scholars of China) students before their departure.
These workshops have the objective to discuss culture shock, self-care, how to help others who may be experiencing distress, and how to stay emotionally healthy. As always, we use heavy student participation throughout our workshops to ensure that the students can incorporate the knowledge quickly and efficiently.
We’ve collected the feedback from the participants to assess our workshop’s outcome and benefits. According to the results, more than 80% of participants reported that they “absolutely” find the workshop useful, and have thus gained the skills needed to take care of themselves. The information on depression and suicide was well received, as they reported.
It’s a quite a difficult topic to bring up to students who are leaving in just a few months’ time to go off and pursue their hopes and dreams, but we are happy to see that an education company like ESC have taken an extra step to make sure that their students not only enter top universities, but that they complete their studies as well.
If you’d like to promote mental health to your audiences, please contact us at: info@candlex.cn
