1,721,001 research outputs found
Risk and Resilience: Exploring the Ecological Factors that Impact the Recovery of Sexual Assault Survivors at Two Centres in the Western Cape
Full text linkBackground: Sexual assault is highly prevalent in South Africa and many women who are sexually assaulted are at high risk of developing poor health outcomes, ranging from HIV to mental disorders. The high prevalence of sexual assault and the burden of poor health outcomes highlights a serious need for interventions for these women. However, it is common that survivors face many challenges when being assisted. In legal settings, there is a lack of prosecution of perpetrators and survivors often face secondary victimisation. In psychosocial settings, they have little access to counselling services with treatment being short-term and involving no follow-up procedure. These problematic legal and psychosocial barriers demonstrate a need to explore survivors' perspectives to understand what factors should be promoted to increase resilience and improve rape recovery. Aims and Objectives: This research aimed to explore how factors on Campbell et al.'s (2009) ecological model contribute to mental ill-health, resilience, and recovery in female sexual assault survivors. The ecological model explains the link between sexual assault and mental health amongst survivors. It uses factors on seven interrelated levels to examine which factors worsen or improve survivors' recovery and mental well-being. The research objectives included: 1) to explore female survivors' subjective experiences of mental health related to their sexual assault incident, 2) to explore how factors on the seven levels of the ecological model improve or worsen female survivors' mental health, and 3) to explore how factors on the ‘self-blame' level of the ecological model interact with other levels to impact female survivors' mental health. Methods: The study involved an exploratory qualitative research design using purposive sampling as the sampling method. There were 19 participants involved in the study. The data collection methods included 11 in-depth interviews with sexual assault survivors, specifically survivors of rape, and two focus group discussions with four HCWs per group. Data collection took place at two different sexual assault centres in Cape Town, Western Cape, and a framework analysis approach was used to analyse data. Results: Results were coded into themes and categorised according to the seven levels of the ecological model. The first category, the individual level, focused on the survivors' mental health experiences and coping mechanisms following sexual assault experiences. Survivors experienced a range of mental health problems, such as depression and panic attacks, and used various unhealthy and healthy coping mechanisms to cope with their mental ill-health, such as creative expression or substance use. There were also many biopsychosocial factors that either improve or worsen survivors' recovery. Biological factors include disturbed eating, sleeping and sexuality patterns, psychological factors include affected emotions, memory, and behaviour, and sociological factors included social iv support, socio-economic status, and social interactions. The second category, the assault level, found that the weapon used and triggering memories of weapons worsened reactions to trauma, and therefore recovery. Category three, the microsystem level, highlighted that negative social reactions and lack of support worsened recovery while positive family social reactions improved well-being. Category four, the mesosystem level, demonstrated that negative interactions with legal and healthcare professionals as well as poor case management impacted the way in which survivors perceived and accessed treatment. This differed to the beneficial factors which involved therapy accessed through NGOs and hearing stories from other survivors. The fifth theme, the macrosystem level, highlighted that rape misconceptions, ignorance about rape in families, and maternal history of rape played a role in hindering chances of recovery and increasing risk to mental ill-health. In contrast, raising awareness through education can help recovery progression and potentially increase support for victims. Category six, the chronosystem level, demonstrated that repetitive experiences of sexual assault have a negative impact on survivors' sense of self-worth and recovery while also worsening symptoms of mental ill-health. The final category, the self-blame level, emphasised that because survivors engaged in unhealthy coping mechanisms and internalised external blame and stigma, this led to creating and worsening feelings of guilt and shame. In contrast, attending counselling, seeking justice, talking about the rape incident, and accepting the occurrence of the assault, facilitated empowerment, well-being, and healing. Conclusion: This study aimed to explore factors that contribute to mental ill-health, resilience, and recovery in female sexual assault survivors. Findings highlighted that many different factors such as unhealthy coping mechanisms, myths about rape, and weapon use, played a role in increasing risk to mental ill-health. Conversely, factors such as therapy, social support, and empowerment increased resilience and improved recovery. Findings also revealed that self-blame was linked to all levels on the ecological model, and this hindered recovery due to survivors often blaming themselves for their rape and feeling ashamed. This research enabled survivors to share their perspectives of what factors strengthened and worsened their mental health, recovery, and resilience. By understanding which factors support or worsen rape recovery, recommendations on how to incorporate positive factors are suggested, such as educational programmes, psychosocial interventions, and further research
A formative study on the adaptation of mental health promotion programmes for perinatal depression in West Chitwan
Full text linkIntroduction: Depression in mothers can have debilitating consequences on the women themselves, their infants and their family. Thus, it is imperative to detect and treat perinatal depression early. Due to lack of awareness and stigma, help seeking, detection and treatment for perinatal depression in Nepal remains low. To counter barriers on lack of awareness, stigma and non-detection of mental health problems including depression, alcohol use disorder, psychosis and epilepsy, the PRogramme for Improving Mental Health carE (PRIME) developed and implemented a community sensitization programme and a Community Informant Detection Tool (CIDT). Neither of these programmes has focused on perinatal depression. This study aims to adapt the depression CIDT and the community sensitization programme to include perinatal depression. Methods: The CIDT and community sensitization programme were adapted using the following four steps. Firstly, a qualitative study was conducted with perinatal women with depressive symptoms visiting Meghauli and Dibyanagar health facilities or "gau-ghar clinic" (n=26) and service providers (n=34) to develop a culturally relevant content. Secondly, a draft CIDT and community sensitization manual were prepared based on the qualitative findings. Thirdly, a one-day workshop and several consultation meetings were held with mental health professionals (n=16) to ensure that the content was understandable and applicable to the context. Lastly, based on the workshop findings and consultation meetings, the manual and tools were modified and adapted for perinatal depression. Results: Due to poor awareness and stigma, none of our respondents had ever sought help for depression from the antenatal or postnatal service providers. Using local expressions for common depressive symptoms such as loss of interest, rumination, pessimistic views, extreme worries, restlessness, two separate CIDTs were developed each for antenatal and postnatal depression. Lack of support from the husband and family followed by poverty were the major contributing factors for depression. In addition, cultural factors such as the low position of women in patriarchal society and preference for son exacerbated problems in some women. The community sensitization manual was adapted to include local myths and facts about perinatal depression; causes with examples related to local beliefs; symptoms explained in local idioms; and role of the family. The heads of the families and key community members were recommended as key targets for the community sensitization programmes. Conclusion: It is important for any intervention to be responsive to local understanding and needs. The adapted CIDT and community sensitization manual has integrated the local issues and expressions of symptoms of perinatal depression for women in the Chitwan district
Participant experiences with a text message and contingency management intervention for alcohol use during pregnancy and lactation in Cape Town, South Africa
Full text linkAssociations of maternal alcohol and non-prescribed substance use with early child growth
Full text link“I drink for vibes”:applying social theories to understand alcohol use amongst South African adolescent girls and young women
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Adv Prev Med
No full textLittle is known about the nature and extent of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use among pregnant women in Cape Town, South Africa, despite the very high levels of AOD use in this part of the country. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among pregnant women attending 11 Midwife Obstetric Units (MOUs) in greater Cape Town. A two-stage cluster survey design was used. In total, 5231 pregnant women were screened to assess self-reported prevalence estimates. Of these, 684 (13.1%) were intentionally subsampled and completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire and provided a urine sample for biological screening. Urinalyses showed that 8.8% (95% CI: 6.7-10.9) of the subsample tested positive for at least one illicit drug. This is higher than the self-reported prevalence (3.6%). In addition, 19.6% (95% CI: 16.3-22.8) of the sub-sample tested positive for alcohol which is lower than the self-reported prevalence (36.9%). There are high levels of substance use among pregnant women attending public sector antenatal clinics. There is a need for routine screening for AOD use and appropriate responses depending on the women's level of risk.U2G PS001137/PS/NCHHSTP CDC HHS/United States24639899PMC393016
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
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