Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD (Community Psychology) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2013. / The purpose of this presentation is to share some ideas on the continuing challenges facing English speaking psychologists in the province of KwaZulu Natal working inter-racially and how it affects the therapeutic relationship as a whole. A convenient sample of five psychologists was drawn from general and psychiatric hospitals as well as those working in private practice. The target population for this study included White and Indian psychologists. Eight participants were selected for this study. The transcripts of three participants were eventually abandoned due to poor quality of the taped interview. All the participants had experience in working with diverse cultures and people who are speaking isiZulu. A discourse analytic approach was employed to understand the complicated language phenomenon in sharing sensitive and confidential material. The rationale of the study was to look at the extent to which psychologists from different cultural and diverse language backgrounds make sense of language and cultural diversity in their therapeutic relationship. There were interesting dynamics that came up from the data collected as follows: From the results it was identified that patients are disadvantaged of the psychological services because of the language they do and do not speak. In general, the study found that English speaking psychologists experience serious challenges when they have to conduct psychotherapy and other related activities with non-English speaking patients or clients. The study found that the issue of working with interpreters continues to be faced with many uncertainties. While the interpretation process is by no means ideal for carrying out psychotherapeutic work, however, it can go a long way in creating access to psychological services. This study has demonstrated that psychotherapy can be implemented successfully through using interpreters, until such time that the system is able to produce psychologists that are adequately proficient in different indigenous languages spoken in South Africa. v Finally, the researcher hopes that this study will offer suggestions to psychology as a profession and find means to deal with the cultural and language challenges that psychology is faced with in order for psychologists to have efficient psychotherapy and subsequent to that work interracially. It was hoped that the study would play a positive role in increasing psychologist’s sensitivity to issues of racism. Furthermore, it was hoped that the findings of this study would help promote culturally respectful programmes and strategies among psychologists and other health-care professionals in KZN.

This study seeks to investigate perceptions of medical doctors towards psychologists. The study focuses on exploring whether race and gender have any influence on medical doctors’ perceptions of psychology. In exploring these perceptions, the study focuses on medical doctors’ knowledge of the psychology profession. Secondly, it focuses on medical doctors’ experiences in working with psychologists. Thirdly, it examines medical doctors’ referral patterns towards psychologists. Finally, it focuses on the kinds of problems that medical doctors are likely to refer to psychologists. This was a quantitative study. The population of this study was medical doctors from both public and private sectors in the Pietermaritzburg region. The sampling method used in this study was convenience sampling. The study was conducted on sixty-two medical doctors. Thirty-four males and twenty-eight females participated in this study. Thirty-two Whites, twenty Indians, seven Blacks, two Coloureds and one Chinese participated in this study. Questionnaires were used as data gathering instruments. In analyzing data, a chi-square test was used. Chi-square analysis was performed at 0.05 percent level of significant association. The findings indicated that medical doctors hold positive views towards psychologists and the psychology profession. The participants seemed to have a good understanding of what the psychology profession entails. The findings also seemed to suggest that medical doctors understand the overall scope of psychologists. Overall findings suggest that there were no significant associations between medical doctors’ responses and their race and gender. This seems to be an area that has not been researched and it therefore serves as a pilot study. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

This study involved an investigation of the perceptions that social workers and occupational health nurses have, of clinical and counselling psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, and priests. The present study includes a sample of social workers and occupational health nurses in the Pietermaritzburg region. Subjects were required to i) rate their confidence in the ability of each of these professionals to treat 5 clinical cases, ii) rate their confidence in each of the professionals to help them with their own problems iii) rate each of the 5 cases in terms of the severity of each case, iv) rate each of these practitioners on 11 personal qualities developed by Webb and Speer (1986), and v) choose from a list of 10 professions the one they would like their off-spring to persue. Repeated measures anovas, Tukey's HSD test, and descriptive statistics, were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that the sample i) was moderately confident in the abilities of psychologists to treat 5 cases ii) was moderately confident in the abilities of psychologists to treat their own problems, iii) rated case 3 as being most severe and psychiatrists as being more competent to treat this 'severe' case, iv) rated psychologists quite favourably in terms of personal qualities, and chose engineers and accountants above psychologists. Further analysis revealed that in certain instances, the sample appeared to have a preference for counselling psychologists over clinical psychologists, and rated mental health professionals more favourably than non-mental health professionals. The results also indicated that the sample appeared to lack clarity about the roles, functions and skills of psychologists. Implications for the job security of psychologists, and the need for educational and public relations efforts are discussed. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1998.