Counselling Corner - Changing the mental health landscape in Myanmar

In Myanmar, a country in SE Asia with about 54 million population, mental health has long been a landscape of silence.

• Talking about feelings was considered shameful.
• Counselling did not exist as a profession.
• Universities offered no training, and few clinics recognized mental health.

Decades of conflict, displacement, poverty, and natural disasters have created widespread trauma, yet access to professional counselling is almost non-existent. 

From a one-person office in 2018, Counselling Corner Myanmar has grown into Myanmar’s first counselling movement supporting over 3,500 people every month in workshops and individual counselling sessions with over 100 staff. Focusing on person-centred therapy in a country where mental health was considered taboo.

In 2022, the Seit Mate Swe program was launched (which means “Mental Friend” in Burmese), which is our community-based model:

• Safe spaces for counselling in refugee camps, villages, and cities
• Trauma healing for children through play, art, and storytelling
• Young counsellors from conflict zones becoming healers for their own communities

This program is currently running 25 community mental health centres across the country, working with a voucher system. This model ensures that communities receive care at no cost and counsellors are fairly compensated for their work, so that mental health becomes accessible and sustainable, even in the most vulnerable areas.

Find out more about our newest member in their most recent newsletter.