A research report submitted to the Faculties of Health Sciences and Humanities, Schools of Public Health and Social Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Demography and Population Studies, October 2017 / Background: Various international and national commitments and interventions that focus on improving maternal, newborn and child health have been established in South Africa. Irrespective of these efforts, adverse pregnancy outcomes (stillbirths and miscarriages) remain invisible within policies and programmes intended to reduce this public health burden thus leading to its high rate in South Africa. This mismatch of burden to action is due to several factors that keep stillbirths and miscarriages hidden, notably underreporting which leads to a lack of data and a lack of consensus on priority interventions and, social taboos that reduce the visibility of stillbirths and the associated family morning. While studies have identified a number of individual demographic and socioeconomic factors associated with stillbirths and miscarriages, the role of household socioeconomic factors remain unexplored. Poor socioeconomic conditions within a household have broadly been linked with poor health and negative birth outcome among pregnant women. This study therefore sought to identify demographic and household socioeconomic associated with stillbirths and miscarriages in South Africa. Methods: This study utilized secondary data from the 2010 – 2014 South African General Household Survey (SAGHS). The study sample comprises of women of reproductive age 15 49 years who were resident in the households selected to participate in the SAGHS. A sample of 248,057 women were included in the study; these are women who reported to have been pregnant in the last 12 months preceding the survey from 2010-2014. The population of interest in this study are South African women whose pregnancy has ended in a stillbirth and or a miscarriage. The outcome variable was pregnancy outcomes (stillbirths, miscarriages and others) while predictor variables include household wealth status, maternal age, source of drinking water, type of toilet facility, sex of household head, province of residence, household electricity, population group and HIV status. Data analysis was done in three stages. First, univariate analysis was done to provide descriptive results of the study population. The second staged involved a bivariate analysis producing odds ratios to examine the association between each predictor variable with each pregnancy outcome. The third stage included an unadjusted (bivariate) and adjusted (multivariate) multinomial logistic regression producing relative risk ratios (RRRs) to examine the demographic and household socioeconomic determinants of stillbirths and miscarriages. Results: The levels of stillbirths were 0.17% and 0.37% in 2013 compared to 0.11% and 0.12% respectively. The stillbirth rate (SBR) from 2010-2014 was 25.7 per 1000 births while miscarriage rate was 24.5 per 1000 pregnancies. Results from the multinomial logistic regression showed that maternal age, race, sex of household head, province of residence, source of drinking water, type of toilet facility, geographic type, household wealth index, hypertension and HIV positive status are significant determinants of stillbirths and miscarriages among women in South Africa. Advanced maternal age (34-39 and 40-44 years), rural residence, being Black, use of other type of toilet facilities, poor wealth quintile, Northern Cape province, being 000HIV positive and drinking piped water are associated with an increased risk of stillbirths and miscarriages. Conclusion: This study found that demographic and household socioeconomic factors are associated with pregnancy outcomes (stillbirths and miscarriages) among women aged 15-49 years in South Africa. This study has demonstrated the fact that household socioeconomic factors are important in understanding the determinants of stillbirths and miscarriages. Thus, the outcomes of pregnancy are not separable from the socioeconomic conditions of the pregnant women within a household as maternal poverty can translate to poor foetal health. Interventions on maternal, newborn and child health should also be more targeted at these pregnancy outcomes as stand-alone health indicators to address the dearth of data and to ensure proper monitoring. Furthermore, women in remote areas who do not have access to electricity, toilet facilities and other important assets in their household should be prioritized by programs on poverty alleviation. Lastly, it is crucial that quality obstetric care services should be made available, accessible and affordable for women in remote areas. This may improve the outcomes of pregnancy through early detection of pregnancy complications. / XL2018

A Dissertation submitted to the Psychology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the course of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Masters in Industrial Psychology. / The aim of this research was to, firstly, explore the relationship between psychological contract breach and organisational commitment, and to examine the extent to which trust mediates this relationship. Secondly, the research aimed to develop and validate a scale to measure psychological contract breach. Data was collected from a large organisation that had completed nation-wide retrenchments. The quantitative sample population consisted of 84 employees in the organisation, while 10 members of the organisation were interviewed to obtain qualitative information. A cross-sectional design was used and data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. The process of triangulation was used to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship being assessed. The psychological contract breach scale was analysed by means of a factor analysis and was found to be valid, and the reliability was found to be satisfactory. The results of the study showed that there is a negative relationship between psychological contract breach and organisational commitment and that trust does not appear to mediate this relationship. Explanations for the findings are offered, and the theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. Finally, limitations of this study and directions for future research are presented. / Andrew Chakane 2018

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / The purpose of this study is to determine if Health Information will reduce the blood pressure levels of black South African's with essential hypertension. Literature has shown clearly that hypertension is common disorder among South African's and has reached endemic proportions. The condition usually occurs in both men and women and commonly kills by stroke, heart failure or uraemia...

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, Clinical Psychology. Johannesburg 1991. / The study focused on the perceptions and' experiences of youtlidn relation to patticip~fion in political violence. ;It examined the .relatierrship between exposure to state violence, expo§ure to domestic violence,. ideological support for violence and participation in poMticaLviolence;and explored the extcat to .which 'g~nder, age and socio-econemic status inf1u~nced,paiticip~at1o~ in political violence.' , \\ II The traditiL\nal an~ contextual theories of violence th~tTorward explanations for participa~()n in political. violence lwere reviewed and their merit relative to viqfence participation. critically examined. o , U .!,} _ " . . " Ojl,.i \ \r)' '~;;" , /.) ,. " } A structured self questionnaire was developed after an initial pool of item J pertaining to violence were generated, their psychometric properties.ofmtemal consistency ass(jssedand these clustered into the. various violence; scales. The revised questionnaire was adnlinistered to first entry undergraduate students (n= 1902, N:.:2677) at the Universityofthe Western Cape. The datawas analysed using quantitative methods, such as chi-square analyses, t-tests and cortelation ryatdces. Data that showed a high degree' of self-reported~ untruthfulness was discarded frorii further analysis. The level of statistical Significance was set at p< Oj0001. (I The results reveal that the majority of respondents were victims of state violence. Participation' in political violence is significantly related to exposure to state violence, an '~deological support of violence, as well as to being male and older. Gender and age differences were noted for participation in political violence with older males being politically violent. 1~lere wag, no significant difference for socio-economic status and participation ill political violence. The variable that showed the strongest relationship to participation in political violence was exposure to state violence (r=0,77), followed by ideological supportof violence (r=O,;2). The relationship of participation in political violence to exposure to domestic violence though significant was poor.(r=Oj08). Thus the study found that participation in political violence is mainly a function of exposure to state violence and is context specific. The youth had not learnt to be politically violent by being involved in domestic violence. Contextual theories seemed to offer a better explanation for participation in political violence for youth in South Africa. Future research should focus on the interrelationships between 1~6litica1 violence and interpersonal violence.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment for the degree of M. A. (Clinical Psychology). / The Impact of political violence on the psychological well-being of civilian populations has received much attention. both locally and internationally. In South Africa, the effects on black children of having witnessed or experienced violence has been extensively researched; however. the impact on white children, albeit that the majority of them are removed from the immediacy of the violence, has not been investigated.(Abbreviation abstract) / Andrew Chakane 2018

The number of women who choose to combine careers and traditional roles as mothers has been increasing steadily over the last number of years. As a result, the subjective wellbeing of these women has been the focus of many research projects over the last number of years. Subjective well-being has been defined in various ways by different authors. One definition describes subjective well-being as people's evaluations of their lives, which includes happiness, pleasant emotions, life satisfaction, and a relative absence of unpleasant moods and emotions. The current study, which took the form of a multiple case study, attempted to explore and describe White employed married mothers’ subjective experience of their well-being. The study also explored these women's experiences of combining the roles of employee and motherhood. The sample was obtained through the snowballing technique, and both qualitative (in-depth interviews) and quantitative techniques (two questionnaires - the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory) were utilized. The analysis of the data that was gathered was done by means of thematic and content analyses.

Recent research supports the theoretical premise that healthy forms of bereavement include meaning making as a coping response to loss as well as a move away from Freud’s original postulation regarding the importance of decathexis as necessary to a healthy resolution of grief. However, traumatic bereavement produces particular kinds of difficulties in meaningmaking and the possible resolution of this kind of loss. The study explored responses in relation to the traumatic loss of a child through homicide in a sample of 7 parents (2 couples, 3 mothers) who were identified through the The Compassionate Friends (TCF) chapter in Highlands North, Johannesburg and who volunteered to take part in the study. Semi structured interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed and subjected to an interpretive thematic content analysis. The thematic content analysis revealed that meaning making responses in relation to the loss of a child through homicide, are complex and that somewhat unexpectedly, parents experienced expectations from society and others to engage in particular kinds of meaning-making as counterproductive and alienating. Issues concerning the simultaneous introjection of and de-cathexis from the lost child also proved enlightening. Meaning-making also involves both some degree of trauma resolution and the recognition of what the loss of the significant other entails. The research also explored the choices and decisions that parents reported as being important in response to the traumatic loss of their child, and therefore suggests some useful pointers for those who encounter traumatically bereaved individuals in the course of their work.

M.A. / A sample population of nine men arrested in Johannesburg, for killing their female partners (former spouse or girlfriend) is analyzed in the context of their killings. The analysis approaches homicide as a Public Health problem and a preventable phenomenon. The analysis proceeds from Public Health and Bulhanian theoretical perspectives. These theories emphasize the relationship and interplay between the social, political, psychological and economic environments and the overall effect they have on individual processes. By contextualising the homicide event into pre-event, event and post-event categories, the study is able to identify risk factors which played a role in the homicide act. The tool of analysis employed in the service of this study is called the Haddon Matrix and is widely used in the Public Health domain as a means of identifying and considering, section by section, the risk factors associated with the injury, the relevant research and other knowledge available and what is needed for the future and the priorities for countermeasures. Analysis includes demographic and social characteristics of the perpetrator and the incident. The results indicate problems in education, communication and the concept of the nuclear family. In the Public Health-Bulhanian sense, the results indicate that the homicide incident originates and occurs within the context of the prevailing conditions of social structural constraint, in the experienced psychological strain of individuals and in the prevailing threshold of social tolerance. The lack of basic human needs, such as professional help, for example, is an indication of the impact that the cumulative effect of social structural constraint has on the family's health. The study also found that individuals experience trauma and pain in a context where objective social conditions affect the rights and privileges of individuals and there is a strain being created on the subjective world of perception, feeling and meaning. It is this wealth of information on the trauma points which presents opportunities for prevention. Among the proposed areas for interventions are: Change individual knowledge, skills or attitudes, such as conflict resolution education, for example. Change social environments, such as better housing, economic incentives for family stability and counselling centres. Change physical environments and agents of violence, such as the availability of dangerous weapons and the increased policing of high risk areas, for example. In conclusion, the study aspires to enrich existing debate in the area of homicide as a Public Health issue.

This study aimed to investigate teenage mothers’ experiences of motherhood and their internal representations of their infants and the relationship between them. In addition, this study aimed to investigate whether there was a connection between teenage mothers’ experiences of parenting and their internal representations of their infants and the relationship between them. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, adapted from the Parent Development Interview and the Working Model of the Child Interview, four teenage mothers from Alexandra were interviewed. The data collected from these interviews was analysed using narrative analysis through the hermeneutic lens of psychoanalytic attachment theory. From the analysis, this study found that teenage mother’s experiences of motherhood were marked by challenge. The two main challenges faced by these young mothers were the tension they experienced between their identities as teenagers and their identities as mothers, and their struggle to provide for their infants and feel like good enough mothers. In addition, this study found that teenage mother’s internal representations of their infants included a representation of both the good baby and the bad baby, but, with the exception of one mother, their representations tended to remain split and the mothers seemed defended against their representations of the bad baby. In terms of their representations of the relationship between them, this study found that these teenage mothers’ representations of their relationship with their infants was lacking. These representations either consisted of a superficial representation of a good relationship between mother and infant, or no relationship at all. Finally, this study found that teenage mother’s experiences of motherhood and their internal representations of their infants and the relationship between them were connected. A number of factors that were found to influence both their experiences and their internal representations include their own mental states, their memoires of their own childhood and their representations of their caregivers, as well as the levels of social support they received. The study therefore concluded that teenage mothers’ experiences of motherhood and their internal representations of their infants and the relationship between them were connected, however further research is required to establish the causal relationship between these factors.

Unemploynent is a problem that confronts many western countries. The aim of this dissertation is to understand, on the basis of a phenomenological investigation, what it means to be an unemployed, white, South African citizen. These meanings are then seen and discussed against the background of the problems associated with the ideological structure within the country. How the latter relates to white employment and psychological life is also explored. The results demonstrate the negative impact unemploynent has upon the psychological functioning of the individual. The results further show the despair such individuals face, having been 'denied' an accepted role within society.