Video by Farai Mugano. Picture by Jekesai Njikizana
Sitting next to a depressed patient on a garden bench in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, 70-year-old Sherry Jiwakai speaks softly into treatment with a warm and reassuring smile.
“It was the right decision for you to come see Mbuya,” she told the customer, meaning “grandmother” in Shona, and shook hands.
Doctors in Zimbabwe have come up with a new way to use lay medical workers, colloquially called ‘grandmothers’, to provide much-needed mental health therapy to their poor compatriots.
The concept of psychiatry professor Dixon Chivanda is simple. A wooden park bench where people experiencing common mental disorders can sit and receive free treatment.
Chibanda’s Friendship Bench offers popular, much-needed and accessible therapy.
Decades of economic hardship and growing poverty have taken a toll on many Zimbabweans, placing a heavy strain on underfunded and understaffed psychiatric services.
Jekesai Nikizana
The Friendship Bench is helping fill the shortage of specialized health workers in Zimbabwe, which has 14 psychiatrists, 150 clinical psychologists, and less than 500 psychiatric nurses for a population of 16 million. It’s helpful.
“We need these alternative innovations to close the gap. My idea is to use Grandma to provide therapy,” said Chivanda, who wore dreadlocks and round-framed glasses.
The bench is “a space for sharing stories, and through storytelling we can all heal,” he said.
His therapy model is currently being exported to the Soccer World Cup in Qatar, with 32 benches representing teams competing in the FIFA tournament, which will shine a spotlight on global mental health.
The World Cup project has partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO), whose chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the initiative as “a simple and powerful tool to promote mental health.” I admire you.
“It’s a great reminder that the simple act of sitting and talking can make a big difference to your mental health,” Tedros recently said.
Jekesai Nikizana
Other countries that have adopted the friendship bench model include Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Zanzibar and the United States. In the United States, her 60,000 people in the Bronx and Harlem areas have access to therapy.
In Zimbabwe, approximately 70% of the population lives below the poverty threshold.
The idea for Chivanda’s Friendship Bench came after a patient she was treating at a public hospital died.
“She didn’t have the $15 bus fare to get to the hospital to get treatment for depression,” he said.
“That was the first trigger and I quickly realized that mental health needs to be brought out of the hospital and into the community.”
Grandmother Jiwakai has been providing therapy from the bench for the past six years, seeing an average of three clients a day.
“Many people have recovered and returned to normal life by talking to us,” said Jiwakai, who was trained in basic counseling skills, mental health literacy and problem-solving therapy. .
The grannies are given scholarships for their service and the work is funded by Friendship Bench, a Chivanda NGO.
Her patients come from all walks of life, young and old, struggling with stress or coping with drug addiction. Some are unemployed or financially destitute, while others are victims of gender-based violence.
With a white sheet clipped to a blue handheld board, she asks clients if they are intimidated by trifles. Among many other questions, she felt exhausted or wanted to take her life.
Grandmother Jiwakai has been providing therapy from the bench for the past six years, seeing an average of three clients a day.
Jekesai Nikizana
Chois Jiya, 43, said she considered suicide when her husband lost his job shortly after giving birth to twins in 2005 and says the service provided at the bench sustains her life. .
“Before I went to the bench for treatment, I thought suicide was the solution,” she said.
She now runs a small business making perfumes and soaps.
Zimbabwe’s oldest and poorest town, Mbale, had only 14 grandmothers when it started in 2006, but now has nearly 1,000 benches and over 1,500 grandmothers in various neighborhoods.
We have helped 160,000 people in the last two years alone.
Mental health problems have skyrocketed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with WHO estimating that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression.
Its latest report “paints a very bleak picture”, showing that six of the 10 countries with the highest suicide rates in the world are in Africa, Chivanda said.
For Harare’s Director of Health Services, Prosper Chonzi, the bench is the ‘master stroke’.
“Economic conditions have increased the demand for mental health services.This is one of the best interventions.
“It made a huge difference in terms of avoiding suicide,” he said.
