'Beichuan Mode' psychological aid after Wenchuan Earthquake

Ren Xuemei, the vice director of China’s first psychological medical service center, has established a system of “Beichuan Mode” for psychological help along with her colleagues over two years of helping people walk out from the shadow brought by the 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake hit China's Sichuan Province in 2008.

Ren’s families say that she was born to be a teacher and she herself wanted to be a teacher too. After graduation, she realized her dream and became a college teacher of China’s Southwest University of Finance and Economics.

During the years, she had a peaceful life with her handsome husband and an enjoyable work. But, things changed when she realized how terrible effects the Wenchuan Earthquake brought to people living in the earthquake-hit zone. And she decided to give up the peace and to help those people.

At first, Ren worked as guide and interpreter for leading domestic experts to give quake-hit zone people psychological counseling. However, after those experts left, Ren Xuemei did not. And she decided to put the whole of herself into the psychological help after quake.

On Jan. 21 of 2010, Ren gave up her beloved teacher job and become a full-time psychological counselor. Her dad told her when she made up her minds that: “Your choice is going to be a tough one, but it’ll worth it!”

Actually, Ren had already past times of tests and became the vice director of Psychological Medical Service Center of Beichuan County, China’s first, back in August of 2009.

When she stepped into her office at the first day, she felt a little bit of loss when facing the new career as well as new computers. But she suddenly realized the responsibility carried on her shoulder when county leaders told her “we’re handling the psychological health of more than 0.23 million Beichuan citizens to you!”

From then on, she started working hard and hard on getting touch with the real psychological situations of Beichuan People.

Although she ever waved on this road, but the support from her family kept her to insist. Her husband told her that he would do all the housework willingly to help her. She was completely moved and made up her mind to insist on the job.

Within the two year time, Ren led her team to build 60 psychological help spots and nearly cover all the Beichuan County, and introduced a series of programs to help people to recover psychological health.

On Nov, 24, Beichuan County government issued a work plan to regulate the future psychological service job in Beichuan’s future according to a draft wrote by Ren’s center, which improved the psychological help after earthquake to a higher new level.

Lots of people would like to phrase Ren as a powerful woman, but she said her wish is quite simple that delivering happiness to others when herself feels happy, and let the happiness start from heart!

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