How can global mental health and the humanitarian sector move beyond its history of discrimination?
In this episode, we take a look inside the global mental health and humanitarian sector. You will meet founder and psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda, who has led Friendship Bench from a local initiative to a global phenomenon. You will hear how powerful encounters with “strangers” contributed to his life's journey. Dixon shares how he has experienced discrimination at various levels within global mental health and the humanitarian sector. He reflects around how he found subconscious narratives within himself and many of those he has met from the Global North. He shares how he sees this as a strongly contributing factor in maintaining the skewed balance of power from the colonial era, both within the field of psychiatry, academia, and global mental health, but equally in society at large. Dixon reflects on how we must dare to face ourselves and others to create space for a world where the negative trend of mental health challenges is turned. As he sees the trend closely connected to the discriminatory structures in society.
Together with Jimmy, they look at how we can contribute to changing the underlying narratives that many of us carry subconsciously.
Dixon Chibanda leads Friendship Bench Global and is the founder of Friendship Bench, which started in Zimbabwe. He has a background in medicine from Czechia and the University of Zimbabwe, in addition to a Phd. in psychiatry from the University of Cape Town. Together with 14 grandmothers, they developed the methodology of training community workers in the problem-solving part of cognitive behavioural therapy. Dixon is passionate about the power of community and the importance of relationships with those around us, but also about spreading insight and knowledge in the sector, which he does as an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London & the University of Zimbabwe.
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