Over the 20th century, Malians relied on local reproductive specialists: excisers (who oversaw initiation and circumcision ceremonies), nuptial counselors (who provided sexual education at marriage), and midwives. These older women’s work remained vital to social conceptions of proper reproduction, even as the biomedical maternal health system expanded, and Malians adjusted to new forms of religiosity and new ideas of status. Reproductive Labors: Women’s Expertise and Biomedical Authority in Mali 1935-1999 traces how, as biomedical care expanded over the 20th century, women and their families, feminist activists, medical professionals, and non-profit workers began to debate the importance of local reproductive practices. Part 1 explores the role of specialist labor in socializing sexuality and gender norms. In Chapter 1, I argue that following the end of slavery in the early 20th century, Malian families used nuptial counseling to instill concepts of honorable sexuality and demonstrate status at marriage (1935-1958). After independence, public outcry over unwed mothers revealed different visions of extra/marital sexuality and adolescence for nuptial counselors and state-affiliated women activists (1959-1986). In Part 2, I turn to reproductive health interventions. Chapter 3 reveals how the colonial maternal health system relied on external actors, from benevolent associations to Malian midwives, all of whom defined women’s bodies as childbearing bodies (1935-1958). Successive post-colonial governments sought to develop policies to ensure rural health access, toggling between training medical professionals to work in rural places and training local specialists, such as midwives, in biomedical techniques (1957-1976). The integration of midwives into biomedical clinics created substantial overlap between various therapeutic interventions, as I show in Chapter 5. Finally, Chapter 6 demonstrates how Malian participation in anti-excision activism owed as much to previous debates over marriage, unwed mothers, and rural maternity care as to transnational feminist movements and developmentalist interventions (1984-1999). Reproductive Labors is based on interdisciplinary research in Mali, Senegal, France and the US, including archival research, oral histories, and ethnographic work. In addition to working in national archives, the project engages with the floatsam of project reports now safe-guarded in people’s homes, bureaucratic documents from institutional archives like Mali’s National Health Directorate, and student theses. However, women’s specialist labor is less visible in archival material. In response to this elision of gendered knowledge, the project integrates ethnographic observation and French and Bamanakan oral history interviews with women specialists, as well as medical personnel and gender-rights activists. Reproductive Labors demonstrates how Malians were socialized into heterosexuality not simply through family or media, but through specific specialist interventions which linked heterosexuality to biological reproduction and gendered identities, deepening key themes in gender and sexuality studies. Reproductive specialists’ expertise was defined by their gender, skill, age, and social status, as most were older women of endogamous social group descent. Conversely, the activists who campaigned against them were usually highly-educated young women with close ties to international feminist institutions, although these linkages were structured by the colonial afterlives of educational and financial networks. Over the 20th century, questions about which group should have authority over young women’s reproductive experiences led to numerous debates for women and their families. Secondly, this project demonstrates that the continued value of local specialists for Malians, alongside the medical system’s reliance on external actors and instability in rural areas, created a specific form of Malian biomedicine driven as much by local therapeutic practices and social hierarchies as by international norms, enriching recent scholarship on the local specificities of biomedicine. Finally, this dissertation deepens scholarship on state-making in Africa. It demonstrates that reproductive health was not simply a subfield of the post-colonial Malian health system but that it became a key site for innovation in governance. As the first academic history of reproductive health in Mali, which has one of the world’s highest rates of maternal and child mortality, this dissertation seeks to understand the history of reproductive practices as a step towards reproductive justice.

The general aim of this study was to research the relationship between psychosocial functioning and emotional intelligence in a sample of 69 employees in different organisational settings in South Africa. Each respondent completed the Personal Multi-Screening Inventory (PMSI) and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). The research findings indicated that there are significant relationships between subscales of the PMSI and subscales of the MSCEIT, in that the ability to manage emotions is associated with low levels of Helplessness, Stress and Frustration, and high levels of Expectation, Satisfaction and Achievement, whereas the ability to perceive emotions is associated with low levels of Satisfaction and Achievement. A relatively high level of the ability to perceive emotions is also associated with Helplessness. It is recommended that employee wellness interventions in the workplace be enhanced through emotional intelligence mediation of negative psychosocial functioning. The study is concluded with recommendations for further research. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. A. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

The purpose of this study was to perform an in depth examination of the major factors that increase the reluctance among African Americans to seek mental health treatment.

"December 2003" / Bibliography: leaves 221-230. / vi, 230 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Public Health, 2004

The general aim of this study was to research the relationship between psychosocial functioning and emotional intelligence in a sample of 69 employees in different organisational settings in South Africa. Each respondent completed the Personal Multi-Screening Inventory (PMSI) and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). The research findings indicated that there are significant relationships between subscales of the PMSI and subscales of the MSCEIT, in that the ability to manage emotions is associated with low levels of Helplessness, Stress and Frustration, and high levels of Expectation, Satisfaction and Achievement, whereas the ability to perceive emotions is associated with low levels of Satisfaction and Achievement. A relatively high level of the ability to perceive emotions is also associated with Helplessness. It is recommended that employee wellness interventions in the workplace be enhanced through emotional intelligence mediation of negative psychosocial functioning. The study is concluded with recommendations for further research. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. A. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

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As the older population increases, there is a need for increased support for caregivers most of them older themselves. Owning a pet may providesome of this support. This study looked at caregivers age 55 and older of brain-impaired adults and examined whether or not the social support provided by pets during the caregiving time contributes to their well-being.

The present study assessed the relationship between mentally ill homeless and their companion pets and questioned if the pets acted as a barrier for them to receive shelter and other services. The study also sought to find if pets acted as a communication tool between this population and society. themselves because they are mentally vulnerable and victims of a mental disorder.

Innovative primary care models that deliver comprehensive primary care to address medical and social needs are an established means of improving health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs among persons living with chronic disease. Care management is one such approach that requires providers to monitor their respective patient panels and intervene on patients requiring care. Health information technology (IT) has been established as a critical component of care management and similar care models. While there exist a plethora of health IT systems for facilitating primary care, there is limited research on their ability to support care management and its emphasis on monitoring panels of patients with complex needs. In this dissertation, I advance the understanding of how computational methods can better support clinicians delivering care management, and use the management of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as an example scenario of use. The research described herein is segmented into 3 aims; the first was to understand the processes and barriers associated with care management and assess whether existing IT can support clinicians in this domain. The second and third aim focused on informing potential solutions to the technological shortcomings identified in the first aim. In the studies of the first aim, I conducted interviews and observations in two HIV primary care programs and analyzed the data generated to create a conceptual framework of population monitoring and identify challenges faced by clinicians in delivering care management. In the studies of the second aim, I used computational methods to advance the science of extracting from the patient record social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDH), which are not easily accessible to clinicians and represent an important barrier to care management. In the third aim, I conducted a controlled experimental evaluation to assess whether data visualization can improve clinician’s ability to maintain awareness of their patient panels.

The primary objective of this research was to explore the impact of possible social factors on non-institutionalized adults 18 years of age or older residing in the United States who exhibited severe mental illness (SMI). A holistic sociological model was developed to explain SMI by incorporating elements of social learning theory, social disorganization theory, and gender socialization theory with social demographic factors. Based on the holistic sociological model, the following factors were investigated: demographic aspects of age, education, income and gender; gender socialization; influence of neighborhood area; social network influence based on communication and interaction among peers and family members; and socially deviant behaviors such as frequently smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and using drugs specifically marijuana. The impact of these factors on SMI was examined. A sample of 206 respondents drawn from National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2003 was assessed. These respondents had answered all the questions related to SMI; social deviant behaviors; neighborhood environment; and communications among peers, family members and friends; and the other studied factors. Ordinary linear regression with interaction terms was employed as a statistical tool to assess the impact of social determinants on SMI. Being female, living a disorganized neighborhood, and frequent and high levels of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol had a significant influence on SMI. This reevaluation and reexamination of the role of gender socialization path, socially deviant behaviors like smoking and drinking, and community construction on SMI provided additional insights. This research is one of the first to develop a more holistic sociological model on SMI and explored the previously untested interactive relationships. The limitations of this study suggest the need to test a potential recursive research model and explore additional bi-directional associations.