Sign Up | Mental Health Group Facilitator Training 2024

‘Over the last eight years, I have encountered many challenges both as a facilitator and as the manager of our mental health peer support group. I’ve documented our experiences, trained our facilitators, and brought all our learnings together in creating a manual. I hope that by sharing this with others, more mental health activists can get a better start and do great work in China supporting our very own community. ’

-Xiaojie Qin

Director of CandleX

Training Details

• Date: 3rd March, Sunday 2024

• Time: 2:30pm-5:30pm

• Location: Online via Voov/Tencent

• Language: English

• Cost: 500rmb, no refund (Subsidies are available for individuals who are unable to pay but have demonstrated commitment and contribution to community mental health.)

• Registration: please contact Summer.

• Training Format: The training will be a combination of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, role-play, and hands-on activities. Participants may have the opportunity to practice their facilitation skills and receive feedback from the trainer and other participants.

This year marks our 9th year of running our support group in Beijing. Seeing increasing need from emerging community members for us to do more on mental health, we are now providing training to prepare individuals to get on the path of mental health advocates and group leaders. This upcoming training provides practical guidance and knowledge based on accumulated experiences from challenges our facilitators have encountered, ethical considerations, and issues we have had running the support group.

We will also go over our internal training manual that outlines the structure of CandleX’s signature program - mental health support group - and the step by step tasks of facilitation. By doing this, we hope to empower more people to get an easier start on creating their own mental health groups and projects in China.

Who Should Attend:

• Mental health professionals including therapists and coaches

• Mental Health Peer support facilitators

• Community mental health advocates

• Anyone interested in get on the path of becoming a mental health professional

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the principles of group facilitation and group dynamics

• Learn effective communication skills

• Develop conflict resolution skills

• Develop strategies for creating a safe and inclusive space for group members

• Learn about self-care and how to manage burnout

Certificate

You will get a certificate from us to indicate that you have completed this 3-hour training.

More About the Training Content

We created a question bank based on facilitator’s debrief, which we do  and document after every session. Over the years, we have engaged in discussions and mini-trainings amongst support group program team members as well as external experts to answer these questions.

Note: our 3-hour training does not intend to cover all topics due to limitation of time. To make sure that this training is relevant to the training participants, I’d like you to look at the questions, and pick no more than 3 as your own learning objectives.

Training Questions Bank

Facilitator’s Self Awareness and Management	What's your style as a facilitator? What are the self-beliefs that could get in the way of facilitation? What is the skill that a facilitator needs to keep in mind when we are confronted with difficult situations? How to proceed with the session as a facilitator when feeling triggered by a topic that has been or is being discussed? What are the traps a facilitator could fall into when facilitating in a group?  Facilitator’s self-care: there are responsibilities in being a facilitator, as well as benefits of feeling the meaning of life by giving, learning new skills. How do you balance your responsibilities to the group without compromising your own wellbeing?
Conflict Resolution Skills	How to deal with conflicts amongst participants when happening in session? How to model disagreement respectfully? What should we do when we disagree with our peer facilitators?
Group Dynamics Management Skills	What general attitudes participants have towards facilitators? How to manage a participant who gives advices when not asked? What to do when a participant is in distress when sharing, intense emotional reaction during self-disclosure? How do respond to situations where a participant damages the progress of the session? How do we know when we need to take that person out of the room? What to do or not to do if there’s prolonged silence in session? Learn how to manage one or a few people who cannot stop talking or who interrupt others inappropriately?
Improve the Operation	What are the risks running a mental health group, and how do you mitigate such risks? Should the group sessions have a topic or it’s better to offer a topic free space? How do we get people to give feedback more? What negative feedback we’ve gotten so far? how do we improve? How to manage the expectations of participants towards the facilitator?

About the Trainer

Xiaojie Qin

A psychotherapist, the director of CandleX, with more than a decade of experiences working with groups, as a researcher, an interviewer, a group facilitator, a group therapist, as well as manager of such groups.

You can learn about her work on psychotherapy by reading Xiaojie’s therapy profile here.