Therapy and a haircut? You bet
You wouldn’t expect the small, poor West African nation of Togo to be on the cutting edge of mental health care, but it is. Or maybe it’s the clipping edge.
With only five psychiatrists for a nation of 8 million people, Togo is training its hairdressers to offer mental health counseling on the theory, I guess, that even borderline psychotics love a good coif. It doesn't matter if you need a wig or you’re wigged out, help is just an elevated chair away.
Togo has offered mental-health training to 150 hairdressers on a continent where there is a lot to be depressed about.
“Mental health crises,” The New York Times writes, “are exacerbated by violent conflicts in countries like Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and in the Sahel region; by rising drug use in many large cities; and by widespread youth unemployment, displacement from the extreme effects of climate change and soaring inflation.”
And that’s “soaring inflation” real-world style, not “soaring inflation” American style, where we get our nose out of joint if we have to pay an extra 50 cents for a Happy Meal.
So in Africa, people from all walks of life are being trained to spot the signs of mental health crises, and report any sort of erratic behavior (Quick, dispatch a battalion of Togo hairdressers to the U.S. House of Representatives.)
The Times writes that in Africa, “Mental health professionals are now providing hairdressers three days of training in which they learn how to ask open-ended questions, spot nonverbal signs of distress like headaches or disheveled clothes and, critically, how not to gossip or give detrimental advice.”
No gossip? In a beauty parlor? Gossip is what makes a beauty parlor therapeutic. It doesn’t make your situation any better, but it’s comforting knowing that others have it worse.
We kind of do this in America already, at least in hair salons — barber shops not so much. Women talk about their own shortcomings; men talk about everyone else’s shortcomings. And if our bi-monthly mass shootings are any indication, men are the ones who need it more.
Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out so bad for Michael Myers if he’s just had a good beautician. “Mikey, I’m sensing a little anger this morning, want to talk about it? What? You want to borrow my scissors? I guess there’s no harm in that.”
In my experience, women are comfortable confiding in a hairdresser, to the point that some will talk through the entire appointment without drawing a breath. Bring them back from 20 minutes under the dryer and they will pick right back up mid-sentence from where they left off.
I’m not saying this to be critical, I say it out of envy. I sit there in stoney silence because for the life of me I can’t think of one blessed thing to say to a 28-year-old woman with purple hair. Really, what am I going to say: “Does that ring you have in your lip make it harder to drink out of a straw?”
Besides, in today’s society I’m scared that any attempt to be friendly, or even civil, will be misinterpreted and come back to bite me. Every public place has a camera, and every person has a lawyer. And even the most innocent sounding expressions can be code capable of spurring an international incident.
Back in the days when I still participated in social media, I totally could have “liked” the loaded phrase “From the river to the sea” solely because it sounds pretty, like a line from “America the Beautiful.”
Now, you take your life and livelihood into your hands every time you open Facebook. For all I know, on some social media channels, “Have a nice day” could be code for “I intend to poison your dog.”
It’s just not worth it, not if you don’t want to end up in a Togo beauty shop.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
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This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Togo offers counseling with its hair care
