“Seeing a Brighter Future” – Experiences of Adolescents with Common Mental Disorders Receiving the Problem-Solving Therapy “Youth Friendship Bench” in Zimbabwe

Abstract

In Zimbabwe common mental disorders are prevalent among adolescents and the treatment gap is large. The recently introduced Youth Friendship Bench intervention (YouFB) addresses this gap by task-shifting youth lay health workers to offer a culturally contextualised, manual-based, six-session problem-solving therapy to adolescents, 16-19 years of age. The aim of this study was to explore participants´ experiences of YouFB to attain a first insight into this novel intervention. Interviews with nine adolescents were analysed using qualitative content analysis on a latent level. The experience of YouFB was positive, perceived to offer hope and relief from feelings of isolation and uncertainty, increase manageability of problems, and contribute to feelings of autonomy, resulting in a feeling of optimism about the future. The notion among participants that this brief intervention had such a positive influence on their lives, sparks interest because of its applicability in low-resource settings.

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank Rhulani Chauke, Kelly Muzariri, Claudius Mugumba Mukoki, Nyasha Madziyauswa and Precious Shangwa of the FB research team in Harare for help with recruiting participants, translation and transcription of interviews. A special thanks to Mary Wadzanai Munetsi for conducting the interviews.

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Author contribution

RV, part of the FB research team in Harare, Zimbabwe, planned the study together with co-authors. SB spent 5 weeks at the FB headquarters to collect data, attending LHW education to gain broader contextual understanding. SB composed the interview guide together with the FB research team, with input from co-authors. SB and KL analysed the data. All authors critically revised the work, and read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

None.

Abbreviations

CKT	=	Kubatana Tose circles (peer support group therapy)
CMD	=	Common mental disorder
FB	=	Friendship Bench intervention
LHW	=	Lay health worker
LMIC	=	Low- and middle-income country
LOC	=	Locus of control
PST	=	Problem-solving therapy
SOC	=	Sense of coherence
SSQ-14	=	Shona Symptom Questionnaire
YouFB	=	Youth Friendship Bench intervention