1.

0 Introduction

During the preparation of the interview session, me myself Venesh and George have
contacted many sectors including the HR sectors as well, but later on some companies
doesn’t match with the answers that were given. We contacted the HR sectors through
family and friends. Then we decided to look for psychology centers. After contacting a
few psychological center, Telos Mental Wellness has given their full support for this
interview. Definitely our sincere thanks to their center.

Speaking about the list of companies that was approach before the Telos Mental
Wellness center as per below:

 Standard Chartered HR
 SUNRAY Construction Company
 UNITAR HR
 Greenwings Psychology Center
 Serene Treat Center
 Bridging psych Center
 Telos Mental Wellness Center

I have contacted all these places through phone calls and emails, but only one of the
centers has replied, which is our current interviewing center the Telos Mental Wellness
Center. Before the interview we have send the number of questions to ask their
permission for the interview.
1.1 Brief description

The Therapy center name is “Telos Mental Wellness Center”, it was established in
the year of 2021 and the month July. There are almost 5 employees working in their
center as they do not want a lot of people working in their center. When it comes to
therapy centers, generally, they tend to be small. Speaking about local or international
employees, all of them are local employees but there is one of the employees is
currently doing the therapy overseas. At the moment there are only one branch of the
center that is located in Shah Alam, Selangor. In this center the type of career
opportunities that you can look for is the position of therapist but yes, they still do have
requirements about the job. Mainly this place focuses on therapist.

Next is about the person that we have interviewed, his name is Kah Seng and he is a
licensed registered counselor, and he is also the founder of Telos Mental wellness
center. Speaking about his qualification he has done his degree in Sunway University
and completed his Masters in Professional Counselling in Monash University. He has
been in the field of psychology for 5 years and worked as a counselor for almost 3 years
now. That is the brief explanation of the center and the person interviewed.

2.0 Interview

The nature of this center business is by considering counselling services for

everybody that needs helps mentally or even when one is feeling good, they are
welcome as well to find their loop holes that can be improved.

Next the Vision and mission of the company, these was been mentioned that usually
therapy is generally quite expensive. And it's expensive not in sense of it adding up, but
it's expensive in terms of like per session or so. The interviewee also mentioned that
some people look at the price that they have to pay for the session, no matter how
much struggle, they have to look at the number. Therefore, the vision of the company is
to have this expertise, and are able to help in order to give people quality of support
while also trying to be as affordable as possible and without compromising on quality.
Moreover, the mission is to destigmatize mental health. A lot of times people have this
idea that they only need to see a therapist when they have problems. It's only when they
are anxious, stressed, depressed, or whatever that's in between, then only they can talk
to someone. But the center also wants to also start and push this idea out of them that
they don't need to specifically have anything wrong with them or should they struggle
with anything for them to see a therapist. They can be perfectly fine and to see a
therapist to know how they can improve, to look for their blind spots.

Furthermore, relatedness to the field of psychology. The interviewee mentioned that

psychology means the study of the human mind. So, what is happening is that they
don't study the human mind only, but what they do is that they understand the human
mind, how an individual works, how they think they are thought processes. But in order
for us to understand that, they should also know what were their history, what were the
things that happened to them, what were their experiences that led them thinking this
way about themselves, about other people, about the world around them. And
generally, a lot of times, because of certain things that happen to them, they have
unhelpful ways of looking at themselves, other people, as well as the world around
them. So, their job is to help people identify the problem, manage the problem, as well
as change certain unhealthy processes that they have. In general, it has been said that
this center mainly focuses on individual mind and changing their thought processes
which is how it is related to psychology.

Next the specific psychological approach/techniques applied. The interviewee says

that if you look at the profiles of their team members, they all practice what they called
as the gold standard of therapy, which is CBT. So, they all practice the goals that are on
CBT, because CBT has been shown to be effective in a wide range of different mental
health conditions. But they don't want to just also be like for everybody is CBT, because
different people need different style to do therapy. So, if you look at the team, also, they
have this also, they all practice CBT, but they also use modalities for different
techniques Specifically, the interviewee which is the sounder ususes DBT for most of
his session with patients as a part of his modality that is also known as Dialectical
Behavioral Therapy.

Speaking about the type of psychology qualification needed for the position The
interviewee said to be a counselor or to be a therapist. It would be definitely very helpful
if a person starts off with a degree in psychology. Because when you study the mind,
chances are you are going to understand how other people's minds work better. So that
would definitely be very helpful. Then you have to do a Master's in Counseling. So if you
Google it, it's called masters of social work clinic, community mental health. Some
people, they specifically go into a master's of what you call it family therapy and things
like that. But generally speaking, the Masters of Counseling will be very helpful. And as
part of the Masters of Counseling Education. Also, we have to go through a few
hundred hours of practical clients to practice the work that we do before we can be
considered a licensed and registered counselor. So, before a person becomes licensed
and registered, also they need to go through an interview, a board meeting with the
Lembaga Kounselor Malaysia (LKM).

Moreover, is the opportunity for internship placement for psychology student. At the
moment it has been said that the opportunity for internship is not allowed, they are not
looking for interns right now. There are not looking for interns because one of the
matters that they are worried about is that they don't want people to come in and after a
few days they're not doing anything.

The general and specific skills that is needed is definitely, you have to be a licensed
counselor, but just in general, if you're talking about characteristics, the interviewee
thinks it's very important for a person to be empathetic. Okay, so being empathetic is
about the general skills of being a counselor. Empathetic, is because there's a very big
difference between listening to someone and you listening to someone attentively, so
there are many times they listen so that they can give a reply. But what's going to be
very helpful, especially when it comes to counseling is that, honestly, you don't need to
have a reply every single time. You don't need to give solutions every single time.

About salary expectation according to academic qualification. The interviewee said

salary is in terms of years of experience. So simply put, the more years that you
practice, the better you are at the work that you do. For example, like going for clinical
training, being able to have the resources and so on and so forth, that helps you to get
experiences. Academics. Not so much academics in terms of like degree and Masters
and things like that. Academics in terms of the clinical training that you go for. For
example, there are many different trainings, many different modalities when it comes to
therapy. So, if you go for level one training, you are considered a level one practitioner,
level two training, your level becomes level two practitioner, level three trading you are a
level three practitioner. Therefore, you are considered to be a more experienced and a
better embracing. So, at the end of the day, it's your salary expectation as well as how
hard you want to work, how many clients you are willing to see.

Room for development for a junior fresh entry employee. The interviewee feel like
there is definitely a lot of room for development because the work that they do, they are
private practice. So private practice is such a sense that you are responsible for your
own growth, how much you want to grow, how much you want to learn, the types of
cases that you want to take on, the modalities that you want to practice. When you see
therapist, it's up to you, because, yes, you might be a part of the team, but we don't tell
you what to do. We trust that you know what you want for yourself. So again, that one
also depends on how much you want to grow. Some people, they're very happy and
they don't want to spend their time learning, reading, going for trainings, and things like
that. They do just a thing of life to get their CBT points and then send it to LKM to show
that they do their CBT session. But then there are some people who they know what
they don't know, and they try their best to learn from them as well. So, the ceiling is set
by you. It's however much you want it to be.

Training and development. The interviewee said when it comes to formal training and
development, unfortunately in such a sense that what some cases they do is that they
pay for your training or they subsidize your training. As he mentioned to us, they are
small people that find people inside this team. So, what they do is more towards giving
each other peer training and development. The idea is that because as he mentioned to
us that we all have something different supplement than CBT. They call it peer
supervision. They don't provide training but they provide supervision for each other.