Image credit: Website https://www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org/
Image credit: Website http://www.mhinnovation.net/innovations/friendship-bench
A paper on The Friendship Bench project in Zimbabwe, with principal investigator Dr Dixon Chibanda (right), is making waves in some parts of the world.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, this project tackles mental health like never before.
For those obsessed with the need to grasp with facts and figures, note that there are 573 anxiety and depression patients in total that took part in this study for a period of six months. Half of these patients received treatment from professionals and half of them took part in the Friendship Bench project. After six months, half of those who were treated at the clinic still showed symptoms of depression and only 13% of those who participated in The Friendship Bench program still had symptoms.
The study was conducted from September 2014 to June 2015 and has since been scaled-up to 72 clinics in the cities of Harare, Gweru and Chitungwiza (total population 1.8 million) with over 27,500 people having accessed treatment.
The Friendship Bench project uses benches as a form of therapy for people who are struggling with mental health and/or emotional problems.
These benches are located on the grounds of medical clinics around Harare and other major cities in Zimbabwe, and each bench (one in each clinic) has a trained community member who counsels people struggling with depression.
Depression in the local language is called “kufungisisa”.
When a person gets to a point where they cannot take kufungisa (thinking too much in English) anymore – they visit the nearest clinic where a trained lay health worker will sit with the troubled patient in the safe place called the Friendship Bench.
Note: The counsellors intentionally avoid the use of Western terms such as ‘depression’ or 'anxiety' which to many, sound unrelatable.
Opening the Mind ("Kuvhura Pfungwa") refers to the therapeutic process by which, through asking questions, the 'client' is encouraged to open his/her minds to identify his/her problems, choose one to work on, identify a feasible solution, and agree on an action plan guided by the lay health worker.
The Friendship Bench project uses benches as a form of therapy for people who are struggling with mental health and/or emotional problems.
These benches are located on the grounds of medical clinics around Harare and other major cities in Zimbabwe, and each bench (one in each clinic) has a trained community member who counsels people struggling with depression.
Depression in the local language is called “kufungisisa”.
When a person gets to a point where they cannot take kufungisa (thinking too much in English) anymore – they visit the nearest clinic where a trained lay health worker will sit with the troubled patient in the safe place called the Friendship Bench.
Note: The counsellors intentionally avoid the use of Western terms such as ‘depression’ or 'anxiety' which to many, sound unrelatable.
Opening the Mind ("Kuvhura Pfungwa") refers to the therapeutic process by which, through asking questions, the 'client' is encouraged to open his/her minds to identify his/her problems, choose one to work on, identify a feasible solution, and agree on an action plan guided by the lay health worker.
The concept is simple really. All it takes is to sit on a park bench and share your anxieties and worries with someone from your own community.
I’m sure you can agree that this is a lot easier than approaching a professional in a clinical setting. And the therapist you consult may not even understand (or the better word is “feel”) what you are going through.
Just because he/she has the so-called specialist training or a degree certificate that shows he/she has a Masters in Clinical Psychology does not mean he/she can help the person(s) suffering from depression.
Four reasons:
• Frequency of the sessions – At these benches, community counselors and patients meet weekly to discuss intimate issues.
• The project is solution-based – “It's all about empowering people to go and solve their own problems".
• The project is communal – There are group therapy sessions where patients gather and sit around the bench and tell others in the group about their own stories and testimonies.
• Local language – The lay health workers speak the local language, Shona, which makes it easy to communicate between the patient and the lay health worker.
As Dr Melanie Abas, psychiatrist at King's College London and one of the study's co-authors said: "This is really one of the few examples where treatments for common mental health problems have been delivered by people who actually live and work in the community".
For more information and access to materials, et cetera – please check out the Mental Health Innovation Network (MHIN) website @ http://www.mhinnovation.net/find?search_api_views_fulltext=friendship+bench&sort_by=search_api_relevance_1.
Also this website @ https://www.friendshipbenchzimbabwe.org/.
The Friendship Bench takes a community approach. And it works because it's non-intimidating, it's casual and laid-back, and it's about opening up to somebody who is relatable and more importantly, real.
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