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Editorial: Mass trauma and mental health in Africa
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African Health Sciences Vol.4(2) 2004: 80-8
Stigma towards people with mental illness: a cross-sectional study among nursing staff in health facilities in Amolatar district, Uganda
No full textIncludes bibliographical referencesIntroduction: Mental health of Ugandans could be improved through mainstreaming the services into primary care systems. Nurses constitute a high percentage of the workforce in health; therefore they can significantly contribute towards several experiences by patients with mental illness. Stigma towards mental illness and individuals living with mental illness is among the major hindrances to effective mental health service delivery amongst healthcare workers. Therefore it is important for stigma to be explored among general nurses as mental health services are being integrated into the primary health care. The aim of this study was to explore stigma among general nurses towards mental illness and individuals living with mental illness. Methods: This was a cross-sectional quantitative study. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to nurses working in Amolatar district health facilities that measured knowledge, attitudes and behaviour towards individuals living with mental illness, in addition to their familiarity with a person with mental illness. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the extent to which stigma was reported in this population. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were done using linear and logistic regressions to identify the predictors of the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of nurses regarding mental illness and individuals living with mental illness. Results: Sixty-three general nurses participated in the study. Most of the participants identified schizophrenia as an SMI, however 79% considered stress to be mental illness and only a quarter of respondents scored above 80% on knowledge about mental illness. Most of the participants believed that psychotherapy was the most effective treatment for mental disorders. The nurses were benevolent (mean 3.06, s.d 0.29) and showed acceptance towards mental health services and individuals living with mental illness in the community (mean 3.56, s.d 0.30) however the nurses tended towards authoritarianism (mean 3.74, s.d 0.34) and social restrictiveness (mean 2.98, s.d 0.27). Level of contact with individuals living with mental illness predicted community mental health ideology and authoritarianism. No demographic variables were associated with level of knowledge using MAKS score and intended behaviour using RIBS tool. Conclusion: This study has provided some of the first data on stigma among primary health care nurses towards people with mental illness in Uganda and has added to knowledge of stigma towards people with mental illness by health care providers in LAMIC. Many of the findings were positive and bode well for the planned integration of mental health in primary health care. The negative findings of this study have shown that there are many areas for improvement which could be tackled by interventions such as public and community education, and in-service training regarding causes and management of mental disorders. Further research could be done to understand more about the negative attitudes found in many LAMIC
War Traumatisation and Its Psychological Consequences on Women of Gulu District
No full textMost of the respondents in the study had experienced at least one torture event. The commonly reported physical torture experiences included beating and kicking, forced hard labor, deprivation of food, water and medicine, and tying (Kandoya).
The psychological methods of torture reported included verbal threats, killing of relatives, detention and sleeping in the bush/swamps. Among women sexual abuse was predominant with rape, attempted rape and forced marriage being common.
The government army (NRA/UPDF) accounted for a quarter of all torture cases, and the rebel army LRA (Kony) for 70% of all torture cases meted out to the respondents. Torture usually took place at home affecting significantly more females than males. Psychiatric disorders diagnosed included post traumatic stress disorder, depression, alcohol abuse disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, somatoform disorder, and suicidal thoughts. In addition, impaired function was reported in work, family relationships, and sexual function. Six percent of the respondents had homicidal thoughts
Long-Term Impact of War, Civil War, and Persecution in Civilian Populations—Conflict and Post-Traumatic Stress in African Communities
Get PDFThis chapter describes how chronic conflict, warfare, and persecution, as lived experiences, have created significant mental distress in communities on the African continent. There is a growing body of research that highlights increasing mental distress in Africa e.g., about sexuality, health, disease, modernity, climate, politics, culture, religion, ethnicities, race, economies etc. Many of these stresses and uncertainties are driven by political persecution, war, and conflict. This has shaped many African people’s attitudes and government policies and an increasing scholarly interest in exploring these “uncertainties and mental distresses in Africa.” The chapter will show how trauma, as seen in conflict/post-conflict settings in Africa, causes significant mental stress and associated social problems as well as medically-defined PTSD syndromes, anxiety, and depression which cause much morbidity and retard development in many African communities. Taking a classical look at post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, the chapter explores the presentation of the various physical and mental clinical syndromes related to war-trauma on the African continent and the consequent health-seeking behaviors of the African peoples in this regard. The term “culture-bound PTSD syndromes” will be introduced and discussed in the broader context of treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention on the continent and worldwide. It will also discuss the dilemma of the vicious cycles of trauma driven by appetitive aggression in today’s Africa which portends to further retard socio-economic development and drives the trans-generational perpetuation of ethnic-based conflicts including genocides. Despite this mass traumatization, the chapter points to the virtual absence of post-conflict mental health policies in almost all African countries, hence leading to discussions of “best-practices” recommendations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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