Friendship bench

I want to share a real-world example from the sources that brings all of this theory together beautifully.

The Friendship Bench Initiative in Zimbabwe.

Ah, yes.

It is one of the most remarkable and successful public mental health initiatives of the last decade.

It utilized existing semantic networks of social support.

The clinical results of this cultural adaptation were staggering.

In rigorous, randomized control trials, they tracked patients six months after receiving the friendship bench intervention.

Only 13% of the patients who worked with the grandmothers remained depressed.

So I think, yeah, because then, like...

A- and I think it came from, um, the Friendship Bench model because then they used grandmothers, right?

Yes.

And so in, in that setting, most people do reach out to grandmothers.

Well, it's more like the plates are saying yes, yes, yes.

I agree with you.

Yeah, the Friendship Bench is such a-

Mm