A well-documented, profound reevaluation of mental health approaches in the developing world.
Chibanda, a medical doctor and practicing psychiatrist, shares his innovative approach to mental health care in sub-Saharan Africa.
When the author began the Friendship Bench project with 14 grandmothers in the early 2000s, there were only six practicing psychiatrists in Zimbabwe. (Today, the number remains less than 20.) Designed to address the limited access many Zimbabweans have to mental health professionals, the Friendship Bench project deploys a team of “lay psychotherapists” to provide a listening ear, sage wisdom, and guidance to those in need. The project also helps to break down cultural stigmas associated with mental health; Chibanda came to realize that wooden park benches located under trees and occupied by welcoming grandmothers provided a welcome “safe space” and alternative to the “crowded clinic” where specialists like himself only had a few minutes with each patient. Featuring the stories of individuals whom Friendship Benches have helped, the book highlights women like Farai, an HIV-positive mother riddled with self-doubt and shame whose life was turned around after just one conversation with a compassionate grandmother on a bench. While the author, a trained medical doctor and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is well versed in modern pharmacology, he highlights the power of indigenous African approaches to mental health and explicates concepts like the Shona notion of kufungisisa(“thinking too much”). Chibanda also tells the fascinating story of the Friendship Bench project’s growth, which exploded following a TED Talk delivered by the author that received millions of views. The project is now a “full-fledged NGO” with an administrative and training center; toolkits are offered to readers who want to “Join the Movement” and start Friendship Bench projects in their own communities. Chibanda’s writing style is empathetic and deeply personal—his text is accessible to readers both inside and outside of the psychiatric profession, and it’s accompanied by a wealth of photographs.
A well-documented, profound reevaluation of mental health approaches in the developing world.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781955831024
Page Count: 208
Publisher: New World Library
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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