Friendship Bench

Sekesai Hwiza, left, 82, is a grandmother and community health worker who helps Zimbabweans cope with the stresses of life by talking with them on a park bench. (Dixon Chibanda)

This week’s cool idea is the Friendship Bench, a group of elder women in Zimbabwe who counsel young people dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts. The program was featured in this LA Times article.

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The Friendship Bench’s research-backed approach of engaging in individual problem-solving therapy by trained lay health workers effectively reduces depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

Already deeply respected in their communities for their wisdom, the elders — affectionately called “grandmothers” — undertake a monthlong training program in the use of basic principles of cognitive behavior therapy, with emphasis on problem solving, and are given access to psychiatrists and psychologists who support them via mobile phone platforms such as Skype and WhatsApp.

They are then set up with a park bench in their communities and begin seeing patients referred by local clinics and other sources.

A Zimbabwean “grandmother,” left, talks to a patient in the Friendship Bench program. (Dixon Chibanda)

The grandmothers working in Zimbabwe can address complex emotional and behavioral challenges faced by HIV patients, who are dealing with mental health problems stemming both from the emotional burden of receiving their diagnosis and from the physical effects of the disease.

While this example from Zimbabwe focuses on elderly women, similar findings have been reported from India, Pakistan, South Africa and Tanzania, where a diverse age range of health workers is deployed.

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