Dixon Chibanda

Dixon Chibanda, PhD, is professor in psychiatry and director of the Wellcome Trust funded African Mental Health Research Initiative supported by the African Academy of Sciences based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is principle investigator on several research programmes and sits on the editorial board of the Lancet Psychiatry International Journal.

He developed and set up the Friendship Bench, a brief psychological intervention delivered by community health workers which has been successfully scaled up in Zimbabwe and introduced to other countries. He is an Aspen New Voices alumni. His research interest focuses on the development of interventions delivered by nonprofessionals aimed at narrowing the treatment gap for mental, neurological, and substance use disorders.

He is a black belt martial arts instructor and is passionate about using alternative interventions such as tai chi and karate to enhance resilience in young people.