TKU’s dedication to build healthy campus was praised by Ministry of Education (MOE) and was awarded with certificate and medal. TKU became one of the schools that performed well in promoting life education and preventing self-harm in 2008.

Since the school plays an important role in college life, TKU dedicates itself to build a healthy campus, helping students develop their bodies and minds healthily and diversely. Combining its original design with the idea of life education and “Program for Preventing Student Depression and Self-Inflicted Injuries in Campus” promoted by MOE, Counseling Section held a lot of activities last year. Since prevention is better than cure, Counseling Section put three-level prevention works into practice.

The first-level prevention work includes setting the regular process to manage crisis, establishing a special phone line for those in need, holding all kinds of activities that discuss the mental issues, and recruiting volunteers. The second-level prevention work includes caring and examining the mental state of all freshmen, tracing counseling case, and integrating the resource of campus with community.

As for the third-level prevention work, it contains organizing coordination meeting for the special cases, managing the crisis of the individual case, establishing psychotherapy group, and looking for the help from community resource. Using the idea of PDCA Cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Action) proposed by Total Quality Management, Counseling Section hopes that it can completely prevent students from depression and self-inflicted injuries.

Besides, the counselors in TKU are all specialists with certificates awarded by the government, and they can provide all kinds of counseling service. With these multiple measures, Counseling Section tries their best to offer a safe and healthy campus.

Dr. Hu Yen-wei, Section Chief of Counseling Section, indicated that people nowadays need to take related issues more seriously since under the pressure of global competition and financial crisis, keeping mental state healthy is the greatest asset one’s own.

Counseling Section tries to adopt the creative approach to conduct counseling activities by playing games. For instance, students could learn a lot from playing in the carnival party that the Section elaborately designed. It also held many workshops, inviting students, even staff and faculty from all the schools in Taiwan, to probe into different issues, and all these gained good comments in return. In addition, aiming at different period in university, such as from freshmen to the students of master and doctoral program, Counseling Section has formulated various schemes and activities, so that all the students can get the help they need.

Therefore, although it was the first time for TKU to be evaluated, we were highly praised by evaluation committee because according to them, we prepared plenty of information and offered multiple activities that we designed painstakingly. By winning MOE’s approval, Dr. Hu expected to promote the right view toward the mental issues. She encouraged students not to view mental problems as an illness; instead, they should face the problems and look for a suitable counselor to deal with their mental difficulties. ( ~Shu-chun Yen )