Location: Zimbabwe, with replications in El Salvador, Botswana, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, the United States, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and Vietnam

Friendship Bench trains community health workers, typically older women whom the organization calls grandmothers, to provide talk-based therapy to underserved populations in familiar local spaces.

Grandmothers conduct 45-minute sessions on park benches in discreet locations, providing up to six free talk therapy visits per client. The grandmothers assess levels of anxiety and depression and screen for cases where a higher level of care is needed. Grandmothers refer higher-need clients to a professional mental health counselor.

After the sessions, clients are connected to a peer-led support group of others who have sat on the Friendship Bench. In the support groups, clients are also taught income-generating skills, such as vegetable gardening.

The Friendship Bench program is currently being adapted in Botswana to train young people to provide talk therapy to adolescents living with HIV.

A randomized control trial in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, found that those who received the Friendship Bench intervention experienced significantly lower anxiety and depression symptom scores after six months compared to a control group. [1]

Beyond mental health symptom improvement, another study found that HIV-positive individuals who received the Friendship Bench intervention were more likely to maintain an undetectable viral load, which prevents sexual transmission of the virus, compared with those who received usual care. [2]

Learn more: https://www.friendshipbench.org/

In Asia and Africa, BRAC uses a community health model focusing on mothers and their young children. In the United States, Changent provides home-based mental health care for children and their families through its Child First program.

For more guidance and organizations working in community health, see CHIP’s Community-Based Approaches to Health Guide. For more CHIP guidance on mental health care, see Health in Mind.