As trained talk therapists, Zimbabwean grandmothers are saving lives

“Zimbabwe has 15 million people, but only 15 psychiatrists, including Dr. Dixon Chibanda. The Southern African country also has one of the world’s highest rates of suicide — as Dr. Chibanda knows all too well.”

The tipping point for Dr. Chibanda came more than a dozen years ago, after a suicidal young woman he was treating didn’t keep her scheduled appointment. Making inquiries, he learned from her mother that the daughter hadn’t come because she couldn’t afford the $15 bus trip from the countryside to his office in Harare, the nation’s capital. Instead, she killed herself.

That’s when Dr. Chibanda decided something had to change.

“It became clear to me that it won’t work when I expect people to come to see me,” Dr. Chibanda says. Then it dawned on him: “The most reliable resource that we have in Africa are grandmothers. There are some in every community, so why not train grandmothers to conduct evidence-based talk therapy?”

And so, in 2006 Dr. Chibanda started working with his first group of grandmothers in Mbare, a township in Harare. Today, more than 2,000 grandmothers provide help in more than 100 communities across Zimbabwe as part of the project, known as Friendship Bench. It is so named because these volunteer therapists sit on simple wooden benches, often in front of hospitals, and listen to people’s concerns and issues.

So far, tens of thousands of people have received help through the program — without appointments or attempting to navigate a nerve-wracking bureaucracy or the fear of being judged.

“In a country like Zimbabwe, where mental illness is shameful, it is important to use language that is accepted by people,” says Dr. Chibanda, who is now CEO of the Friendship Bench program.

And so grandmothers don’t talk about depression. Instead, they use the word “kufungisisa”— which in the Shona language that’s widely spoken in Zimbabwe, means “thinking too much.” What’s more, these older women are much more readily accepted by Zimbabweans than doctors are.

Boehringer Ingelheim has been a long-time supporter of the Friendship Bench program. “This concept has proven to be very effective, as the grandmothers help people feel rooted in the community and are amazingly empathetic,” says Michael Schmelmer, Member of the Board of Managing Directors with responsibility for Finance and Group Functions.

“We in Boehringer Ingelheim support this project as we, too, believe that mental health is an issue of huge concern, touching the lives of millions of all ages,” Mr. Schmelmer says. “This is why we also focus on mental health in our research. Initiatives like this can make a big difference in the lives of people.”