Chibanda’s 2025 book, The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution, arrives at a time of deepening psychological and social distress worldwide. Published by New World Library in California, the volume spans pages xiii–185 and is priced at $18.95. It spotlights 14 grandmothers and their role in inspiring a mental health revolution, while placing the challenge within a global context marked by conflict, social isolation, environmental and economic pressures, and widening inequality.
The book’s central argument draws attention to a major gap between how people experience distress and how health systems recognise it. Those with greater access to knowledge and digital tools may describe their concerns through diagnoses such as depression and anxiety. Many others use language centred on suffering and pain, experiences that may not fit neatly within biomedical diagnostic frameworks. Because biomedical approaches continue to shape healthcare in much of the world, such expressions of distress can remain hidden, unheard and unaddressed.
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the problem is intensified by shortages of equitable, accessible and affordable mental healthcare. Stigma can also make available services unacceptable to people who might otherwise benefit from them. The impact is particularly severe for historically marginalised communities, which bear a disproportionate burden of mental health concerns while receiving inadequate care.
The book therefore presents mental health not only as a clinical issue but also as a question of language, dignity, accessibility and social justice.
Original Source: https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/40/book-reviews/kuvhura-pfungwa.html
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Publish Date: 2026-10-02 10:54:00
