A preliminary study in medical anthropology in Brunei,Borneo

Nine rural village communities in the jungle of Brunei, Borneo were studied to ascertain possible effects of rapid social change on the health of the inhabitants. The social mores and religious beliefs of the rural tribes—Iban, Dusun, and Punan—have undergone but little change over many hundreds of years. During the past three decades, however, enormous social pressures for change have evolved from extraordinary economic prosperity of the region, due to the exploitation of large discoveries of oil and gas. Much of the money has been invested in health care, with the result that malaria, typhus and other tropical scourges have been virtually wiped out. Child and maternal mortality have been reduced to the standards of some of the healthiest countries in the world. The young of the formerly illiterate population are being rapidly educated in new schools scattered throughout the nation. New roads are penetrating the jungle and a thriving lumber industry has been established. Motor boats for the rivers, T.V. and even a national airline have been added. Despite these incursions a vigorous proseletizing by the Moslem and to a lesser extent by the Christian church, the villagers have held tenaciously to their ancient animistic beliefs. Living in long houses, they have also been able to maintain a tightly cohesive patriarchal family structure. Against this background there is as yet little or no evidence of the major diseases of Western society—coronary artery disease and hypertension, although most forms of cancer are commonly encountered. Brunei offers a splendid opportunity to test the putative relationship of chronic vascular disease to social structure and a way of life. Future studies may be made prospectively as the almost inevitable breakdown of old customs and patterns of living occurs in the face of rapid modernization.     

A trainee psychotherapist’s heuristic exploration of losing a mother to suicide

ABSTRACT

Suicide bereavement is a newly developing field of research in the UK, yet over 6,600 people take their own lives here every year. This heuristic inquiry aims to explore the lived experiences of trainee psychotherapists bereaved by maternal suicide. It examines the lived experiences of the researcher and two participants, with data collected through interviews, dreams and journalling. The findings revealed five themes: 1) It’s not just about the suicide, 2) The pain continues – attachment, abandonment and fear, 3) Left with all the unprocessed feelings – “the shit”, 4) Trigger after trigger – complicated experiences of psychotherapy training, 5) A catastrophic loss that no one “gets”. Implications for the counselling and psychotherapy profession are discussed.     

Abstracts

Two studies were designed to establish whether high anxiety sensitive (AS) university students selectively process threat cues pertaining to their feared catastrophic consequences of anxiety, and to examine potential gender differences in the selective processing of such threat cues among high versus low AS subjects. Forty students (20 M; 20 F) participated in Study 1. Half were high AS and half low AS, according to scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI). Subjects completed a computerised Stroop colournaming task involving social/psychological threat (e.g. EMBARRASS; CRAZY), physical threat (e.g. CORONARY; SUFFOCATED), and neutral (e.g. MOTEL; TOWEL) target words. High AS subjects demonstrated more threat-related interference in colour-naming than did low AS subjects, overall. High AS menevidencedgreater interference relative to low AS men only for the social/psychological threat stimuli; highAS women evidencedgreater interference relative to low AS women only for the physical threat stimuli. Study 2 was designed to replicate and extend the novel Study 1 finding of a cognitive bias favouring the processing of social/psychological threat cues among high AS men. Participants were 20 male university students (10 high AS; 10 low AS). In addition to social/psychological threat, physical threat, and neutral words, a category of positive emotional words (e.g. HAPPINESS; CELEBRATION) was included as a supplementary control on the Stroop. Consistent with Study 1, high AS males evidenced greater Stroop interference than did low AS males, but only for social/psychological threat words. No AS group differences in Stroop interference were revealed for the physical threat or positive words. Clinical implications, and potential theoretical explanations for the gender differences, are discussed.