BTS’s Suga (real name Min Yoongi) is establishing a specialized treatment center to support the treatment and social independence of patients with autism spectrum disorder. On the 23rd, Severance Hospital held a groundbreaking ceremony for the ‘Min Yoongi Treatment Center’ dedicated to treating children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Despite his active schedule with BTS, Suga has consistently engaged in sharing activities and shown a sustained interest in mental health, psychological and behavioral issues, particularly adolescent depression. This center will support the mental health of children and adolescents through language, psychological, and behavioral therapies and operate various programs linking clinical practice with research.
Suga planned this project starting with communication last November with Chun Geun-ah, a pediatric psychiatry professor at Severance Hospital and an authority in the field. He realized that while patients with autism spectrum disorder require customized treatment tailored to their life cycle, it is challenging to achieve with existing short-term therapeutic interventions. Therefore, he agreed on the need to establish a specialized treatment center that can provide long-term support over 10 years or more. With this understanding, Suga expressed his intention to donate 5 billion KRW to Severance Hospital. This donation is the largest ever made by an artist to both Severance Children’s Hospital and Yonsei University Health System as a whole.
Professor Chun and Suga have been discussing the creation of the treatment center and the use of music in social skills training for child and adolescent patients with autism spectrum disorder from late last year to early this year. Based on these discussions, they developed the ‘MIND’ program, a social skills group program incorporating musical content into existing social skills training.