This is an I-Heart podcast.

I'm May Viggins and this is Solvable.

Interviews with the world's most innovative thinkers working to solve the world's biggest problems.

My name is Dixon Chibanda and my solvable is breaking the wall of depression

by training grandmothers all over the world in basic cognitive behavioral therapy

so they can provide care in their communities.

Dixon Chabanda is an associate professor at the University of Zimbabwe, and he's the director

of the African Mental Health Research Initiative. He's also one of only 16 psychiatrists

in the whole of Zimbabwe. Now Now that country has a population of 13 million people.

So Dixon Chabanda created the Friendship Bench.

That's a place for people to seek and access therapy for mental health easily.

These friendship benches are run by women in the community.

They're fondly referred to as grandmothers, and their work is proving hugely successful.

It's even beginning to catch on around the world,

with a bench popping up here in New York and also throughout Kenya.

We certainly need solvables like this,

because mental health is a global issue.

Today, an estimated 322 million people around the world

live with depression, and the majority of those people are in non-Western nations. Now, mental

health is fundamental to our collective and our individual ability as humans to think, to experience

emotions, to interact with each other, to earn a living and really just to enjoy life. In low-income

countries like Zimbabwe, where 72% of the population live below the poverty line.

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