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Therapist Uncensored Podcast

From Zimbabwe to New York City, Expanding Quality Mental Health Access – the Friendship Bench with Dr. Dixon Chibanda (272)

Therapist Uncensored Podcast

Sue Marriott LCSW, CGP & Ann Kelley PhD

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Science, Relationships, Education, Self-improvement

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr. Dixon Chibanda shares the powerful story behind the Friendship Bench, a community-based mental health model that centers healing in the heart of local communities. He explores how grandmothers—often overlooked in traditional mental health systems—play a vital role in offering care, connection, and wisdom. Dr. Chibanda discusses the barriers to accessing mental health services, the role of storytelling in the healing process, and the global expansion of the Friendship Bench. Grounded in research and lived experience, this conversation invites a rethinking of care—away from over-medicalization and toward more accessible, human-centered approaches.

Transcript

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0:00.0

coming to terms with the simple fact that each one of us is a healer.

0:05.0

And you don't need to be a psychiatrist, you don't need to be a trained therapist.

0:11.0

And the key ingredients of healing you already have in your possession, that ability to use expressed empathy, active listening, non-verbal communication, the skills to reflect

0:26.7

and show that you are rooted in the present moment. We all have that, but we haven't been

0:32.0

practicing it for such a long time, you know, that we feel we are not capable of doing it.

0:37.4

So that's the other

0:38.4

challenge that most people struggle with. And so we spend a lot of time, you know, trying to instill

0:45.7

that sense of confidence in a person's ability to use expressed empathy, active listening,

0:59.2

nonverbal communication, and using silence as a tool for communication and creating connections. Welcome to Therapist Uncensored. Building on decades

1:07.9

of professional experience, this podcast tackles neurobiology, modern attachment,

1:12.6

and more in an honest way that's helpful in healing humans.

1:16.0

Your session begins now with Dr. Anne Kelly and Sue Marriott.

1:26.5

When someone close to me got out of the hospital this past spring, she had all these

1:31.2

specialists lined up, cardiologists, endocrinologists, you name it. But literally, she had no one to

1:37.1

coordinate her care. So we're sitting there looking at the list of follow-up appointments.

1:41.8

And when I ask her about a PCP, she said she has got

1:45.6

meaning to find one, but she keeps running to these roadblocks. Either they don't take her insurance,

1:50.7

weren't taking new patients. It was stressful because she really needed someone to coordinate her care.

1:57.1

So we literally pulled out my phone right there in her living room and got on Zoc Doc.

2:02.5

Within 10 minutes, we found her a primary care doctor who takes her insurance, had great reviews, and could see her that same week.

2:11.6

It was amazing.

2:12.9

Zock Doc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors

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