Aung Clinic

Domain V · Systemic, relational, group & community · Aung Min, San San Oo · 2010 · Yangon, Myanmar

What it is

The Aung Clinic (also styled Aung Clinic Mental Health Initiative or Aung Mental Health Initiative, "Aung MHI") is a small, non-profit, free-of-charge community mental health day service in Yangon, Myanmar. It is a service model, not a single therapy: a non-clinical day centre that combines…

Format

• Format and setting. Day service open 09:00–17:00 daily; no overnight stays; free of charge, with travel subsidised for people from far away. Over 200 individuals and families supported. No diagnostic group excluded; homeless people can attend during the day. Team (c. 2020): one psychiatrist, one…
• Stage C. Engagement in the day programme. Goal: regular participation in a self-chosen mix of individual counselling, group therapy, family therapy, art therapy, mindfulness, occupational and vocational therapy, skills sessions and the cooking club; medication reviewed with consent. Peer volunteers…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• No phased protocol, manual, session count or fidelity system has been published; the Aung Clinic is not a licensed programme and no certification is required to work in its spirit. Below is the care pathway as WHO describes it, arranged into stages.
• Version followed: the Aung Clinic as documented in WHO's 2021 technical package Community mental health centres: promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches (section 2.1, data to about 2020), supplemented by the clinic's own team in Goethe-Institut Myanmar's Art & Healing orientation and certificate workshops (2022) and the Edible Art Club project, by the Federation of International Human Rights Museums…
• Status after the February 2021 coup. Work after the coup is documented up to mid-2024. Both doctors took part in Goethe-Institut Myanmar's Art & Healing certificate workshops in Yangon in May–June 2022. Midi Z's documentary The Clinic was filmed at the clinic between 2017 and 2023 and ends in the coup period, with Dr Aung Min shaving his head and becoming a monk. In October 2023 Kyoto University described him as…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• peers used as unpaid staff; tokenism; peer burnout.
• exploitation or exposure of identity against wishes.
• groups drifting into complaining about the person or planning forced treatment.
• sessions becoming babysitting with no goal. Working: skills used outside the clinic.
• plans written by staff for the person. Working: the person can say what is in their plan.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.