From Christian Science Monitor:
The neutral colors, anodyne landscape paintings, and diplomas ranged on the windowsill make Tian Guoyan’s office much like a psychological counselor’s clinic anywhere else in the world.
But this is China, where only 20 years ago, recalls Canadian psychiatrist Michael Phillips, his local colleagues hid their work from neighbors who feared that mental illness was infectious, and thought that such doctors would have caught it from their patients.
Ms. Tian is pioneering a new and rapidly growing profession in China, as ever more psychotherapists and counselors hang out their shingles with names such as “Happiness Heaven” or “Mood Manager.” But they cannot hope to keep up with demand, they say, in a turbulent society where a typhoon of change has torn through ordinary people’s lives. [Full Text]
