Eyes wide open: Facilitating student therapists’ experiences with the unfamiliar

Psychotherapists and counsellors work increasingly with culturally different or unfamiliar clients in the context of global migration and relocation. This paper explores the learning processes of trainee therapists within a South African community clinic context which confronts trainees with cultural diversity and a range of complex and traumatic presenting problems. Learning within this context entails interfacing with the ‘unfamiliar’, a process which challenges students both culturally and personally. Drawing upon the ideas of Wilfred Bion we suggest the importance of supervisory reverie in helping students convert raw sensory data into reflective practice. We suggest that working within community clinic contexts prompts personal anxieties as well as context-related anxieties of persecution or annihilation, of narcissistic injury and of contamination. It is hoped that a psychodynamic understanding may prompt further debate regarding the training of therapists working with diverse populations and problems.     

Holistic Psychology: A Brief Primer

This article explicates the foundations, essential themes and healing principles of holistic psychology; an approach which provides a corrective for such trends in modern scientific psychology as disciplinary perspectives, the overemphasis on the economics and politics of professionalism. Holistic psychology emphasizes spiritual healing, multi-cultural counseling, community and ecological interventions. Its core pillars of practice and care stem from the spiritual and wisdom traditions widely applicable to combating illness, injustice, violence, materialism, and technocratic influences so prevalent in contemporary society. As a breath and/or spirit based healing practice, holistic psychology provides a foundational exercise for personal, social and cosmic transformation.     

Community Psychology in Ghana: Challenges,Successes and Prospects

Community psychology gained formal recognition in Ghana when a few students were admitted to Wilfrid Laurier University, in Canada, to pursue master's degree in the early 1990s. In Ghana, community psychology is enacted through the operations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and professionals. The university classroom is also being used as the main context for introducing people to the field of community psychology. In comparison with the work of community psychologists in countries such as the United States of America and Canada, the field is still underdeveloped in Ghana. “Small wins” which refers to the process of achieving an intervention objective through gradual and incremental successes, are considered as examples of “best practice” in Ghana, where religion and superstition are at the heart of almost every activity. Despite the current challenges, community psychology has a promising future in Ghana.     

The Reliability of the Dyadic Satisfaction (DS) Subscale in a Low-income Semi-rural South African Community

This study investigated the reliability of the Dyadic Satisfaction (DS) subscale of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) in a South African setting. One-hundred heterosexual, coloured, low-income, semi-rural couples with a mean age of 43.59 years and limited formal education participated in the study. To estimate validity, the DS subscale was correlated with the Index of Marital Satisfaction (IMS) and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS). There appears to be a particularly strong relationship between the DS subscale and the IMS. The DS subscale can be used reliably as a measure of relationship satisfaction in the South African community studied.     

Promoting Inter-Relational Reflexivity with Psychosocial Workers in Community Work: A Case Study from Burundi

We explore the practice of creating reflexive spaces within community work with psychosocial workers living in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A central idea is inter-relational reflexivity—reflexivity within relationships that leads to collective action. Theoretical ideas related to inter-relational reflexivity are examined and a case study of the engagement with the psychosocial workers, which used these ideas, is presented. Among the issues explored are: the importance of staying with the lived experiences of people; the challenge of ensuring that inter-relational thinking is transferred to collective social action; and the methodologies that can be used to establish ongoing psychological and social processes that address the structure of power and promote transformation and healing within traumatised communities.     

Still Photography Provides Data for Community-Based Initiatives

We use community psychology's accent on methodological pluralism and giving voice to the marginalised as a platform to critically examine the utility and outcome of photography as a data collection and community engagement method. Accordingly we focus on two community projects that used still photographs to identify environmental and household childhood injury risks respectively. The first project involved the visual documentation, examination and analysis of environmental threats in an informal settlement. The second project focused on the documentation and identification of selected childhood injury risks in and outside homes in an informal settlement. This study provided visual images that are detailed and complex and that allowed the researchers to acquire greater understandings than would have been possible from written texts alone. These photographs may be used to create injury risk awareness in the respective communities and among other relevant stakeholders.     

Psychological Implications of Participatory Community Development Projects and their Relevance for Poverty Alleviation in Rural Communities in Africa

This article addresses the psychological foundations of participatory and effective community development projects in rural communities in Africa aiming at poverty alleviation. Psychological implications of such projects include improved collective self-esteem of individuals and groups in those communities. Positive community projects also enhance agentic behaviour in communities which are enables in their capacity for action.     

预立医疗照护计划在我国实施的可行性探讨

从临床医护人员视角,阐述预立医疗照护计划、生前预嘱等在我国实施的可行性。具体分析预立医疗照护计划在我国的发展与需求以及在我国实施可能面临的问题与困境包括文化习俗、相关认知度、法律法规、医疗资源等,并就预立医疗照护计划在我国的发展提出几点思考和建议,包括构建预立医疗照护计划临床应用专家库及共识,强化医患有效的沟通、推动相关法律与政策的实施等。总之,我国将预立医疗照护计划、预先指示合法化及普遍推广还有很长一段路要走,需要在政府、学者、实践人员、公众的共同努力下才有可能实现。     

生前预嘱、预立医疗指示和预立医疗照护计划的概念关系辨析

通过回顾文献对生前预嘱、预立医疗指示、预立医疗照护计划三个概念产生的背景、定义、内容组成和法律实践等问题进行梳理与澄清,进一步指出概念之间的关系。生前预嘱与预立医疗指示属于归属关系。预立医疗照护计划是继预立医疗指示产生和应用后,为促进其签署而提出的概念,二者在内容、实施的侧重点及实施效果方面存在差异。通过概念辨析,旨在减少医务人员和公众对以上概念的混淆和误解,为后续研究和临床实践开展提供借鉴。