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Laura Zhou

Beijing psychotherapist Jane Li, 28, has spent years promoting the use of psychological methods and personal interaction with therapists to improve the wellbeing of mainlanders with mental and emotional problems. 
At first she found people were too shy and conservative to speak about their problems. Now she has launched online platform Jiandanxinli.com to link reliable therapists with people looking for solutions to their issues. 
She spoke to LAURA ZHOU
 
How did you start your career as a psychotherapist?
I knew about psychotherapy early on in life because my mother is also a psychotherapist. After studying English at a mainland university I studied cognitive neuroscience for my master’s degree in Britain. I’d planned to take my doctorate after returning to China in 2007, but didn’t think I was suitable for that. I got my feet wet as a psychotherapist at a university in Beijing in 2008, where I gave counselling to students. Then in 2010 I became a full-time therapist.
 
How has psychotherapy developed on the mainland?
The first group of mainland psychotherapists started their careers in the late 1980s after German experts came to China to teach and train people about psychological analysis. Since 2000, many people have trained to provide counselling, and when I returned from Britain I found I knew a lot of them. But at that time, when I told people I had studied psychology, people were more likely to think I was a psychiatrist – or ask for help with finding a good psychiatrist.
Before 2010 families of people with serious mental problems would ask for help in finding them a hospital, but since then they’ve come to me to recommend a therapist – for example with help in solving problems in their marriage, or their relationship with their children. One reason for the change is that people, especially those born in the 1980s with higher levels of education, a different views about psychotherapy compared with their parents’ generation.
 
Are Chinese people conservative and shy about discussing psychological problems?
There are always some people that will need psychotherapy, but many may have no idea of what is involved. I have also seen some unique psychotherapies used in Chinese society. People may seek help from the community officials, for example, or middle-aged or elderly women in the local neighbourhood, who can help them take care of trivial family problems. There is an old slogan that says, “Go to the Communist Party organisations if you have problems”. Other people seek help from fortune tellers, or take part in group activities, which can often help ease psychological stress.
Of course, middle-aged women in the neighbourhoods are not professional psychotherapists, and cannot help solve problems with someone’s personality. But psychotherapists are trained to help people to better understand themselves and remove the emotional barriers in their personalities.
 
How did you come to set up a platform linking clients with therapists? 
I started to write columns about psychotherapy on the internet in 2012. Later I organised lectures, posted videos online and hosted online radio programmes. As more people started to approach me online I realised it was not always easy for people to find a good therapist. I started to introduce some clients to reliable psychotherapists, but found good therapists also needed a platform so they could get in touch with clients. 
I didn’t have a clear idea about starting a business at that time. But in January last year I took a seven-week entrepreneurship programme at Draper University, in Silicon Valley, founded by American venture capitalist Tim Draper. At the end of the course, each student was asked to pitch an entrepreneurship idea, and Tim was interested in my idea of building a platform between therapists and clients. I received US$1.1 million investment last year from Tim and two mainland funds – the Beijing-based ZhenFund, run by Bob Xu Xiaoping, and China Growth Capital – and launched my website Jiandanxinli.com, a name that means “simple psychology” in Chinese, which helps to link clients with good therapist.
 
How does the platform work?
China has more than 500,000 licensed psychotherapists, but most haven’t built up a lot of experience of running a practice or providing counselling. So we try to connect them with established therapists to offer them additional professional training, and also take care of legal matters, marketing and administrative issues, so they can focus more on providing therapy.
We also shoot videos for each therapist so they can introduce and promote themselves. It helps clients because they can not only read their résumés, but also see their faces and hear their voices. It’s important for clients to know things about their therapist, too.
In June, we launched a new listening service, too, which allows clients to anonymously speak to our trained listeners on mobile phones. It is similar to the hotline service, and it costs 58 yuan (HK$70) for a 25-minute phone talk. It’s a good way to release stress, too, but I have to say that listening can never replace professional psychotherapy.
We also have a paid-call therapy service, which allows clients to seek help from professional therapists.
Today we have more than 200 therapists in 60 cities – not just in China but all around the world – who are able to offer professional therapy to Putonghua-speaking clients. We also have a mobile phone app and organise off-line events.


Q&A: Chinese psychotherapist clicks with mainlanders looking to ease mental health woes

Photo: SMP Photos

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