Why midlife Hong Kong professionals are retraining as counsellors, therapists and coaches

Elise Phillipson was 45 when she returned to university, on what she calls her “second or third life”. She had first studied hotel management; as a nine-year-old growing up in Hong Kong, she asked her father what she should be, and he suggested she work in a hotel. In adulthood, she retrained as an English teacher, married and raised two children. By the time her youngest started primary school, she found herself wondering again what occupation was right for her. Her husband urged her to look at the books on their shelves. “Psychology,” he said. As a teenager, she had briefly considered the profession, but there was a stigma – “only crazy people study psychology”. Yet friends always came to her with their problems; it was as if “good listener” was tattooed on her forehead, she laughs. Eventually, she took degrees in psychology and counselling, then completed a master’s while living in Hong Kong. In 2022, at the age of 52, she started practising as a psychotherapist. “It felt really natural,” Phillipson says, “like this is what I’m meant to do.” The advantage of changing track in midlife, she says, is precisely that long route: “We’ve been through stuff. We’ve been in terrible relationships. We’ve had these things that go on psychologically, emotionally.” Phillipson’s path is one answer to a question that haunts many in Hong Kong: what does it mean to age well, professionally, in a city built on work? What comes after the job that once defined you? For a growing number of people in their forties and fifties, the answer is to become a therapist or coach. Career-shifters in the lecture hall Universities say the composition of their counselling programmes has changed. At the University of Hong Kong, the Master of Social Sciences (Counselling), launched in 2002 as a two-year part-time degree, still attracts social workers and nurses. But in the past decade, its applicant pool has “significantly diversified”, programme director and professor Paul Wong Wai-ching says. The faculty now sees “a notable surge in high-calibre applicants from sectors like finance, law, communications and the corporate world”, Wong says, who come with a wealth of life experience and are often looking for “a more meaningful way to contribute to society after achieving success in their primary careers”. At City University of Hong Kong, the Master of Social Sciences in Counselling shows a similar pattern. Programme leader and professor Ricky Kwan Chi-kin says that in recent years, nearly all their students have been part time and over 30, with about half coming from atypical professions. Around 20 per cent work in management or administration, 15 per cent in customer service and a small but significant percentage in media, explicitly “looking to start a new career”. Hong Kong-born Lara Day, a former journalist who headed digital content strategy at the M+ museum before its opening in 2021, made just such a career switch and today works as a life coach. “Your career is an expression of you, and just like seasons change, this is a different expression of what I want to contribute in the course of my life,” she says. For her, the turning point came around 40, after an unplanned move to Australia during the pandemic and the birth of her second child. Yoga teacher training led her to realise she had “so much more to bring to the table” from her long-standing interest in mind-body health and her experience in guiding colleagues as a manager. Coaching, rather than a longer path through clinical psychology, offered a way to “be helpful to people more quickly” while fitting around young children and her writing projects. Like Phillipson, she feels that former roles were highly relevant. “I know what it’s like to be an ambitious mid-career professional,” she says. “I know what it’s like to navigate an office space, to hire people and fire. There is value in experience.” Both women retrained before it was faddish, but the pivot to therapy has become a trend. “I’m doing a master’s in counselling” can now be heard around dinner tables when the get-to-know-you questions move beyond “How long have you lived here?” to “What do you do outside of work?” Counsellor saturation and system-wide shortages A surfeit of counsellors appears to be merely in one stratum, however. At the level of Hong Kong’s mental health system, academics and advocates say the problem is not too many counsellors, but too few people in any mental-health role. However, Hong Kong has long had a well-documented shortage of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, and demand has risen as the pandemic and economic uncertainty have taken a toll. One 2023 report noted that people could wait up to 95 weeks for psychiatric support in the public system, while the share of residents with a common mental disorder had risen from one in seven to one in six. There are only about 460 psychiatric specialists in Hong Kong. Mental health lies on a spectrum. Wong says psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are essential for clinical diagnosis and severe pathology, but trained counsellors are the “front line of the ecosystem”. Graduates of counselling programmes, he says, are trained to handle common challenges such as stress or relationship problems before they escalate into crises requiring specialist care. NGOs report difficulty recruiting enough staff to run low-cost or free counselling programmes at scale, and academics emphasise that youth mental health is a particular pressure point. The scarcity feels at odds with the perception that every burned-out professional is rebranding as a therapist or life coach. Part of the explanation lies in where new counsellors and coaches show up. Masters’ programmes are designed to feed graduates into a range of settings, but many cluster in English-language private practices and corporate-facing roles: Central- and SoHo-based consulting rooms, well-being programmes and executive coaching. Browse the websites of larger counselling practices, and you find ex-lawyers, former publishers and other veterans of “fast-paced corporate environments” working as counsellors. “There are a lot more counsellors out there,” Phillipson says. “The private market is getting a little bit saturated.” At the same time, “you’ve got this whole other thing happening where people think, ‘I’ll just ask ChatGPT instead of seeing someone.’” Day acknowledges the competition from the use of AI apps for mental health advice. “If someone’s experiencing suicidal ideation and your AI is trained to be a yes-man, that’s not good,” she cautions, but at the same time, “I’ve had really positive experiences chatting with AI about things in my life. It can say the right thing at the right moment.” She sees a fresh wave of human rivals. “Maybe two or three friends in Hong Kong in my social group have made the transition, whether entirely or they do it as an adjunct to their existing work,” she says. They may be entrepreneurs or yoga teachers who decide to pursue a master’s degree in counselling. Ageing well, with eyes open For someone considering a late pivot, be prepared. “You’re not going to earn as much,” Phillipson chuckles. “If you’re coming from finance or law, you’re not going to be on that same scale of income.” Private practice is largely not covered by insurance, it requires “a lot of marketing”, and ethically you cannot counsel friends, family or ex-colleagues – meaning “a whole swathe of your potential market is gone”. Day’s observations are similar. She would not “put financial pressure on your business to sustain you immediately”, but the upside of a mid-career switch, she adds, is that “you probably do have that [financial] buffer to follow a more aligned path”. Both link their choices to a sharper awareness of time. Day had a recent health scare; Phillipson stresses how much it matters to do the work you feel “meant” to do. “You do only have one life,” Day says. “If you’re going to be a therapist or a counsellor or a coach, now is the time.” Not everyone is destined to be a counsellor, and a late-life pivot is neither easy nor lucrative – but for some, helping others becomes a way of ageing with integrity and, perhaps, a little more grace. Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here.

Why midlife Hong Kong professionals are retraining as counsellors, therapists and coaches

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}More Hong Kong professionals in their forties and beyond are becoming therapists or coaches, seeking a new purpose and a change in career

More Hong Kong professionals in their forties and beyond are becoming therapists or coaches, seeking a new purpose and a change in career