In Zimbabwe, where clinical mental health services are scarce, her chances of getting professional help were next to zero. She contemplated suicide.
A wooden bench and an empathetic grandmother saved her.
Older people are at the centre of a homegrown form of mental health therapy in Zimbabwe that is now being adopted in places like the United States.
The approach involves setting up benches in quiet, discreet corners of community clinics, in some churches, poor neighbourhoods, and at a university.
An older woman with basic training in problem-solving therapy patiently sits there, ready to listen and engage in a one-on-one conversation.
The therapy is inspired by traditional practice in Zimbabwe in which grandmothers were the go-to people for wisdom in rough times.
It had been abandoned with urbanisation, the breakdown of tight-knit extended families and modern technology.
Now, it is proving useful again as mental health needs grow.
“Grandmothers are the custodians of local culture and wisdom. They are rooted in their communities,” said Dixon Chibanda, a psychiatry professor and founder of the Friendship Bench initiative.
“They don’t leave, and in addition, they have an amazing ability to use what we call ‘expressed empathy’, to make people feel respected and understood.”