The Friendship Bench project was started by psychiatric professor Dixon Chibanda. He started the project in 2006 to position elderly people at the heart of a locally developed mental health therapy program in Zimbabwe.
Under the project, he places elderly individuals on benches in private, calm areas of community clinics, some churches, impoverished neighborhoods, and universities.
The therapy is based on ancient Zimbabwean practice, in which grandmothers were relied on for advice during difficult times. Thus, under Chibanda’s initiative, an older woman with basic problem-solving therapy training patiently sits on a bench, ready to listen and engage in a one-on-one session.
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“Grandmothers are the custodians of local culture and wisdom. They are rooted in their communities. They don’t leave, and in addition, they have an amazing ability to use what we call ‘expressed empathy’, to make people feel respected and understood,” Chibanda said, according to Africa News.
His idea was however born out of tragedy when in 2005, being one of about 10 psychiatrists in Zimbabwe at the time, one of his patients committed suicide after they couldn’t afford the $15 bus fare to visit him.
Following the incident, Chibanda recruited and trained 14 grandmothers in the neighborhood near the hospital where he worked in Harare. The grandmothers receive $25 per month to assist with transportation and phone bills.
The network, which now collaborates with the health ministry and the World Health Organization, now includes more than 2,000 grandmothers nationwide.
Currently, there are only 18 psychiatrists and 917 psychiatric nurses in Zimbabwe for a population of 17 million. A report indicates that the country records “consistently high rates of suicide (23.6 per 100,000), exceeding Sub-Saharan averages, while mental health receives just 0.42% of the total healthcare budget.”
In 2023, more than 200,000 Zimbabweans sat on a bench for therapy from a trained grandmother. That year, Chibanda was also awarded a $150,000 prize by the McNulty Foundation in the United States for revolutionizing mental health care.
He revealed that the concept has taken root in parts of Vietnam, Botswana, Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania, as well as in “preliminary formative work” in London.
New York City’s new mental health plan has also said that it is “drawing inspiration” from Chibanda’s idea to help address risk factors such as social isolation, Africa News reported, adding that orange benches are now located in places like Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
HelpAge USA is also exploring the concept in Washington as part of the DC Grandparents for Mental Health initiative.
