Dixon Chibanda

Dixon Chibanda, MD, is a psychiatrist, professor and researcher working to democratize mental health care. He is a practising medical doctor and professor of psychiatry and global mental health at the University of Zimbabwe and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is also a published researcher, author, advocate and public speaker.

He is the founder and Global Lead of Friendship Bench. He started it in 2006 in Mbare, one of Harare's townships. The programme has since been refined and adapted in all 10 provinces of Zimbabwe and replicated in over 10 countries. His book, The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution, tells the story. In his own words, he first doubted that the approach could work with grandmothers who were not formally educated, because he was thinking in a Western, biomedical way that called for psychologists and psychiatrists. His work has since explored the intersection of indigenous knowledge and Western models of care to develop sustainable interventions in global health.

As principal investigator on several research projects, he has led the Friendship Bench team through randomized controlled trials. His website describes these trials as consistently showing evidence of the intervention's effectiveness, including a cluster randomized controlled trial published in JAMA. More than 100 peer-reviewed publications on the programme are available online. His published work also covers adolescent and youth mental health, HIV and mental health, and digital interventions such as Inuka.

Chibanda directs the African Mental Health Initiative (AMARI) and is a founding member of the Coalition for Scaling Mental Health, which aims to close the mental health care gap worldwide. He has written about his work for The Guardian, LA Times and Project Syndicate. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, Skoll World Forum, World Health Assembly, Aspen Ideas Festival and TEDWomen, where his talk on why he trains grandmothers to treat depression describes the journey of the Friendship Bench.