Park benches and grandmothers: Zimbabwe's novel mental health therapy spreads overseas
Voice of America
Siridzayi Dzukwa, right, talks to Tambudzai Tembo outside her house near Harare, Zimbabwe, May 15, 2024. In Zimbabwe, talk therapy involving park benches and a network of grandmothers has become a saving grace for people with mental health issues. An empty bench is seen outside the Friendship Bench offices in Harare, Zimbabwe, May 4, 2024. Siridzayi Dzukwa, a grandmother, right, talks to a colleague while seated at a bench in Hatfcliffe on the outskirts of the capital Harare, Zimbabwe, May 11, 2024.
After her son, the family’s shining light and only breadwinner, was arrested last year, Tambudzai Tembo went into meltdown. In Zimbabwe, where clinical mental health services are scarce, her chances of getting professional help were next to zero. She contemplated suicide.
This photo provided by the Elephant Nature Park shows three of the roughly 100 elephants stuck in rising floodwaters at the park in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, Oct. 3, 2024. (Darrick Thompson/Elephant Nature Park via AP) Tourists leave a flood-hit area in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand, Oct. 5, 2024.
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Oct. 5, 2024. People stand near damaged vehicles at the site hit by an Israeli strike that, according to a security source, killed a Hamas leader, Saeed Atallah, and three family members, in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Oct. 5, 2024. A man walks past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Israeli strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in the Chiyah area of Dahiyeh, Beirut, Oct. 5, 2024.
FILE - Restaurant owner Shin Byung-chul looks from behind a flyer he put up of Kenneth Barthel, who was abandoned in the area as a child and later adopted to Hawaii at 6 years old, at his restaurant in Busan, South Korea, May 17, 2024. FILE - Kenneth Barthel, left, who was adopted to the United States at age 6, and his wife, Napela, comfort each other as they leave the Busan Metropolitan City Child Protection Center in Busan, South Korea, May 17, 2024, after searching for documents related to his birth family.