‘We all need someone’: the hairdressers tackling stigma of mental health issues in west Africa

Source: ‘We all need someone’: the hairdressers tackling stigma of mental health issues in West Africa,” The Guardian, 5 October 2025.

In Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Togo, where therapy services are almost absent, some stylists are being trained to listen, comfort and guide

Yopougon, the largest of Abidjan’s 13 communes, with a population of 1.5 million, is known for its entrepreneurial grit, its bubbly nightlife and, in pop culture, as being the birthplace of Francophone Africa’s most popular comic character, Aya de Yopougon.

Beneath the bustle, it is also home to another taboo-busting pioneer: 49-year-old Adjoua Catherine Tano, a hairdresser who has spent two decades offering mental health advice, or just listening quietly as she cuts her clients’ hair.

A school dropout who tried out as a bank cashier before becoming a hairdresser, Tano’s resilience recently came in handy when speaking to a teenager worried about failing their exams. “I told her: ‘Don’t think negatively,’” Tano said. “‘Even if you fail, how can you think that you have failed in life?’”