You won’t find it in the National Health Service’s list of symptoms for depression, but for any of us who have experienced it, thinking too much can be a hallmark of the condition.
The words Zimbabwe’s granny therapists – who work for free from neighbourhood park benches and have proven more effective than pharmaceutical treatments for depression and anxiety – use to help their clients, are equally enlightening. Kuvhura pfungwa, which is a shona word for ‘opening up the mind’, kusimudzira, which means ‘uplifting’, and kusimbisa which means ‘strengthening’, are watch words we could all live by.
In our new issue, we met the team of grandmothers changing lives in Zimbabwe, and the psychiatrist who founded the Friendship Bench project, which will be installing their first benches in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of London next year.
Image: Cynthia Matonhodze and Costa Juta
