When it comes to improving your mental health, it seems there’s no limit to the number of suggestions the internet has to offer. From gratitude journals and breathing exercises to weekly therapy sessions and prescription medications, absorbing the full spectrum of advice can be a bit daunting. But what if a simple park bench could do more good than a round of antidepressants?
One community in Zimbabwe decided to find out by designating “Friendship Benches” in the communal spaces of health clinics, NPR reports. In Harare and similarly sized cities, locals can seek out Friendship Benches to talk about their problems in a safe, judgment-free zone. University of Zimbabwe psychiatrist Dr. Dixon Chibanda came up with the idea after recognizing the stigma surrounding mental illness in his country. The traditional thinking that depression is a curse, combined with the fact that Zimbabwe’s population of 13 million relies on just 13 psychiatrists, makes it nearly impossible for sufferers to obtain quality help.
[quote position="full" is_quote="true"]It's all about empowering people to go and solve their own problems.[/quote]
For those struggling with kufungisisa, the local Shona term for “thinking too much,” community counselors are available to meet and discuss personal issues at the benches on a weekly basis. Treatment also encourages group therapy sessions, which involves patients gathering at benches to relate both their troubles and progress. This method seems to be much more palatable for the typical Zimbabwean, Chibanda says. As he tells NPR, “It's all about empowering people to go and solve their own problems.”
A study recently published in JAMA supports Dr. Chibanda’s anecdotal findings with evidence of Friendship Benches fighting depression more effectively than prescribed medications. Half of the 573 patients studied in Harare received standard treatment involving speaking to a nurse and getting prescriptions, while the other half participated in Friendship Bench meetings. Six months after the study began, 50 percent of those who got the standard treatment still showed signs of depression, while just 13 percent of Friendship Bench participants showed symptoms. To be clear, talking to any random stranger at a park bench probably won’t give you the same results as talking to a community member who’s been trained to give individual and group counseling at a Friendship Bench.
Apparently, the idea of repurposing benches to foster a sense of community is catching on. Three years ago, 10-year-old Christian Bucks got the idea to install a “Buddy Bench” at his school Pennsylvania. And in Bowling Green, Ohio, one dad and a troop of Girl Scouts decided to tackle playground loneliness head-on by installing buddy benches of their own. At a Buddy Bench, children having a hard time finding playmates can take a seat to let other students know they want to be included, the Sentinel-Tribune reports. According to Christopher Ostrowski, who raised funds to install the benches at his son’s school this past fall, kids are already using the new system and learning they’re not alone in the process. “It’s amazing the number of kids with no one to play with at recess,” Ostrowski tells the Sentinel-Tribune, “I did this project mainly for my son at Kenwood. But I could not just do it there. So many kids in our city feel alone at recess, and hopefully this will help.”
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.