Tawhida Shiropa doesn’t wear a lab coat or command a lecture hall, yet she’s quietly changing the face of mental healthcare in Bangladesh. In a country where mental health is still wrapped in silence and stigma, she has emerged not just as a founder, but as a force—a public figure with a purpose.

A former development professional turned mental health innovator, Shiropa is the visionary behind Moner Bondhu, Bangladesh’s first digital platform to offer accessible, culturally sensitive, and affordable mental health services. She founded it in 2016, long before mental health became a fashionable topic at conferences or a trending hashtag on social media. For her, it wasn’t about buzzwords. It was personal.

She saw how people were suffering in silence—friends, colleagues, neighbors—without access to therapy or even a vocabulary to express emotional pain. Therapy was reserved for the privileged. Depression was misunderstood as laziness. Trauma was hidden. And suicide? An unspeakable tragedy brushed under the rug.

Moner Bondhu emerged as a radical response to this silence. With a name that means “Friend of the Mind,” the platform functions just like that: a friend you can confide in when the world turns unkind. It offers online counseling, emergency mental health support, teletherapy, corporate wellness programs, and emotional wellbeing workshops. Today, it has reached over 5 million people, and its community of trained psychologists has handled more than 100,000 sessions—many with youth, women, garment workers, and people living in rural or marginalized communities.

But Shiropa’s story isn’t just about scale. It’s about sincerity.

Born and raised in Dhaka, she was no stranger to the economic disparities and gender-based inequalities that pervade urban and rural lives alike. She studied Political Science at the University of Dhaka and later entered the development sector, working with organizations like BRAC, where she learned how systemic change requires both grassroots understanding and top-down strategy.

It was during her years working with survivors of trauma—from natural disasters to domestic violence—that the seed for Moner Bondhu was planted. She noticed that psychological wellbeing was always an afterthought in aid work. Communities would receive food, shelter, training—but rarely counseling. Emotional recovery was considered secondary to survival. And in that oversight, something crucial was lost: the possibility of true healing.

Shiropa began to ask a fundamental question: what if we considered emotional support to be as important as physical aid?

That question led her down an unconventional path. Without any prior background in psychology, she built a team of licensed professionals, invested in training, and collaborated with experts to create content in Bangla—a rarity at the time—to make mental health approachable, not clinical. Through social media, she began to normalize mental wellness for an entire generation. Today, Moner Bondhu’s Facebook posts regularly reach hundreds of thousands, offering daily affirmations, meditative tips, and emotional check-ins in a language and tone that feels like home.

It’s this linguistic empathy—meeting people where they are emotionally, socially, and culturally—that makes Shiropa’s work resonate. When floods strike or schoolchildren report anxiety after exams, Moner Bondhu activates rapid-response counseling. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her platform became a lifeline for thousands, especially frontline workers and caregivers facing burnout, grief, and fear.

And yet, she remains grounded. Shiropa still visits local schools, speaks at universities, listens to stories from garment factories, and insists on translating psychological jargon into everyday Bangla. Because for her, accessibility is not just a feature—it’s the mission.

Her work has not gone unnoticed. In 2022, Shiropa was recognized by Facebook’s Community Leadership Program. She was also selected for the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), where she shared Bangladesh’s mental health challenges with peers from around the world. But even as accolades pile up, she continues to return to the grassroots, reminding herself—and others—that real change doesn’t happen in air-conditioned boardrooms. It begins in homes, tea stalls, schools, clinics, and conversation circles where people slowly learn that it’s okay to not be okay.

Moner Bondhu is now expanding its services to cover mental health support for climate-affected communities, youth, and Rohingya refugees. Shiropa is exploring partnerships across Asia to create a South Asian mental health alliance—one that understands that colonization, poverty, and patriarchy still define the emotional vocabulary of the continent.

Her team is also training schoolteachers, workplace HR managers, and community leaders to become first responders to mental health crises. Because as Shiropa says, “Mental health care should not be a luxury. It is a basic human right.”

She doesn't see Moner Bondhu as just an app or a nonprofit. It is a movement for emotional democracy.

In her vision, mental health becomes as integral to public policy as education and sanitation. Government budgets include therapy subsidies. Schools teach emotional intelligence. Media avoids sensationalizing suicide. And one day, a teenager in Khulna or a migrant worker in Gazipur won’t need to feel ashamed about asking for help.

For now, Shiropa continues to chip away at the silence, turning it into stories, sessions, and solutions. Her work is rewriting the social contract around mental health in Bangladesh—one message, one session, one healing voice at a time.

She knows the journey is long. But in a world fractured by crises, inequality, and burnout, she offers a simple, radical promise: you are not alone.