“We all need someone”: Hair hairdresser treats the stigma of mental health in West Africa | Africa
YOPOUGON, the 13 largest Abidjan societies, with a population of 1.5 million people, is famous for its graphics in the field of entrepreneurship, its bubble night life, and in the pop culture, as it is the birthplace of the most popular comic figure in Africa, Aya de Yipoggon.
Under the bustle, it is also home to another pioneer: Adjoua Catherine Tano, 49 -year -old, a hairdresser spent two decades to advise mental health, or just listen calmly because she cuts the hair of her customers.
One of the school’s contestants who tried as a bank was drained before becoming a hairdresser, Tano’s flexibility was recently within reach when talking to an anxious teenager about the failure of his exams. I told her: “Don’t think negatively,” Tano said.
Mental health remains a topic of taboos in most parts of Africa, although the World Health Organization suffers from mental health problems on the continent. Treatment in a large number of symptoms, with 1.4 Mental health workers For every 100,000 people.
Through black societies, hairdressers have become a safe space, especially in societies that have access to mental health care – or good health care in general.
Bluemin Foundation, a non -profit organization that operates through Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Togo, has connected the relationship of the client hairdresser through the Heal by Hair initiative. According to its founder, Marie-ALIX De Ptus, more than 400 hairdressers, including Tano, have been trained in the last two years to work as the first respondents or “mental health ambassadors”, reaching more than 100,000 women. By 2030, De Potter hopes to reach more than 1,000 hairdressers in 20 countries.
“Confidence is already.”
I started with a love story that turned tragic. In 2012, while De Motters was on a trip to her original Cameron, her husband was killed. She became a widow while she was pregnant in four months. The issue is still without a solution.
She said, “I spent my first night as a widow with a hairdresser.” It was it more than that night because you are surrounded by people only and you do not know who could have done this … So we had this relationship as it came every week and did my hair [initially] At home and listen. “
Inspired by its personal story, the Foundation conducted a study in 2021 in seven Frankovonian countries: 77 % of the respondents confessed to restrictions in their hairdressers, and more than 90 % of their mob’s mobs who sought their lawyer said.
She said, “We have only linked the confidence that women already give to the hair presenters with the tools,” she said. The first training took place in April 2022.
The program was organized on free and three-day training with psychiatrists and mental health experts who teach women about active listening, sex-based violence and signs of depression-as well as psychology theories. After that, it is evaluated before receiving a certificate.
“The training went very well … I got my diploma and this,” said another hairdresser, Thérèse Gueu, where I reached the Book of Psychology on a shelf in its salon in the Tabqa district of Abu Pubu.
Over a period of six months, the trainees are supported by peer groups and access to the psychological referral system. When the customer shares deeper problems, the hairdressers refer their customers to professional psychologists, or in cases of domestic violence, to the police. Many still feel concerned about thinking, pointing to the financial and societal costs to do this in a conservative area where one in three people live in extreme poverty.
Initially, the funding of the program was mostly from the DE public savings, but donors and private agencies such as the Development Innovation Fund in France are now dancing. However, the resources remain small for the amount of work facing the small team of the institution consisting of 17 paid and about 100 volunteers.
Their work resulted in stories about joy and recovery: in Togo, one of the trainees rented a person in a psychiatric hospital, where he presented social rehabilitation.
“Often when you are sick and you were taken to hospital, people say you are crazy,” said De Potter. “So if you have a job and a person who accepts your training, you are out of taboos.”
A hairdresser left her home because she was a victim of violence, but she is now helping people. In some societies, hairdressing players say a few men have begun to reach the lawyer as well.
Among the hairdressers, there is a general feeling of fulfilling their backs as a form of emotional support in their societies. “[When] “People come to explain their problems for me, it is a pride for me as well because I know that I am authorizing someone.”
“For many of these women, this is the first recognition of them as a leader in their society and a protector,” said De Potter. “These women tell us:” Before I just do hair, and now I recover. “