Based on years of exploration and practice, the Psychological Research and Counseling Center has taken a promising path featuring uniqueness, strong capability, and great influence. By now we have built a teaching and research team comprised of a member of the Psychological Branch of the National Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education, an academic and technical leader of Sichuan Province, professors, associate professors, and lecturers. In addition, we have built five platforms of provincial and national levels, including a National Popularization Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, a Key Research Base of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Sichuan Province, and the Sichuan Provincial Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center, etc. With years of efforts, we have made pioneering achievements in the aspects of the mental health education experiment platform, psychological education, disaster psychology, psychological counseling, experiment technology, and the development of the psychological education curriculum cluster represented by our national-level open video class and our national-level resource-sharing class.

To achieve further development, the Psychological Research and Counseling Center will rely on its existing advantages, follow the principle of upgrading its academic research, its platforms, and its talents, and actively build the national-level psychological education platform to play a more active role in providing platform support and disciplinary support for the implementation of SWJTU’s main strategy of revitalizing the university with talents.

The Psychological Research and Counseling Center was founded in 1996 and was expanded into a school-level department in 2006 undertaking the mission of teaching and research after being approved by the authority of Southwest Jiaotong University.

The Psychological Research and Counseling Center mainly undertakes the mental health education work of the whole university and the teaching and research of applied psychology. In addition, the center also offers services to the general public. In 2011 and 2013 the center won the first prize of teaching achievements of Sichuan Province. Again, in 2013 the center won a second prize of philosophy and social sciences of Sichuan Province (a government award).

We have been building up our research orientations of applied psychology with Chinese characteristics on the basis of the psychological research achievements of advanced countries. We now have the following major research orientations: mental health education, disaster psychology, youth psychology, psychological counseling, and experimental techniques.

In addition, we have been participating actively in social services, such as offering post-disaster psychological aid for the 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake, the 4.20 Lushan Earthquake, and the 7.23 bullet train crash accident in Wenzhou. In the meantime, we have also been providing mental health education for professionals of the national power system, the national railway system, government agencies, and the educational system, and actively caring for disadvantaged groups including migrant workers and AIDS patients.