This research examines the many different ethical issues that emerge in the health care setting with regards to prenatal diagnostic testing. Identifying the areas of clinical practice and religious counselling in need of improvements, particularly physician-client communication, is important to ensure that competent pregnant women make informed, considered choices about prenatal testing. This paper investigates the many factors that contribute to pregnant women's decision-making processes surrounding the acceptance or refusal of the maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein screen, ultrasonography, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, and preimplantation diagnosis. Integrating scholarship in bioethics, religious studies, and the anthropological and sociological study of medicine, this dissertation offers a comparative analysis of religious attitudes toward prenatal diagnostic testing, describes the complexities of practical decision-making by pregnant women faced with genuine ethical dilemmas, and provides an analysis of ethical issues related to prenatal testing. This research will be of interest to scholars in religious studies and bioethics, prenatal genetic counsellors and obstetricians involved in the provision of prenatal diagnostic testing services, and specialists in women's health and reproductive decisionmaking.

Research shows that women are at higher risk for being victimized simply because of their gender. Women with mental illness living independently are especially vulnerable, since they underreport victimization and underutilize available resources. This study evaluated the benefits of educating women with mental illness about safety and violence. Twenty women utilizing outpatient services at two community mental health centers participated in one of two 12-week groups: 15 received an educational curriculum and 5 a control condition. Outcomes were assessed using pretest and posttest measures of quality of daily life, self-esteem and perceived control over life events, awareness of available resources to them as women, awareness of violence, attitudes about safety, and confidence in abilities to protect themselves. The greatest improvement was in the curriculum women's awareness of resources. Intra-group variability, a small sample size, and other unexpected complications precluded a definitive evaluation of the curriculum, but overall results suggest further research in this area would be beneficial. / Department of Psychological Science

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-146).

Thesis (M.A.)--The Master's College, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [116-120]).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-146).

Thesis (M.A.)--The Master's College, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [116-120]).

No description available.

This retrospective study was undertaken to determine the effect of nutritional counseling and assessment of underweight pregnant women enrolled in NIP program of the Virginia State Health Department on pregnancy outcomes, including biological, social and nutritional risk variables. A total sample of 2228 prenatal women enrolled in the program from 1988-1991 were subjects for this study. A NIP program tracking form was used to obtain all the information pertinent to this research. About half of the underweight women as measured by percent expected weight remained underweight at their last visit and only 44% of the underweight pregnant women had normal expected weight at their last visit. Women of the other ethnic group had the highest change in protein intake during their pregnancy indicating that these women showed remarkable improvement in their dietary intake. The incidence of low birth weight in this subject population was greater when compared with the state vital statistics. Black women appeared to be more vulnerable than white women or women of other ethnic group. No significant difference was seen in the incidence of preterm and low birth weight infants born to underweight women who remained underweight at their last visit and those who had improvement in their percent expected weight. Longer NIP participation was not positively correlated with pregnancy outcomes. But positive correlations with number of nutritional visits and when the prenatal care began, it is possible that nutrition intervention by the NIP nutritionists may have reduced the incidence of unfavorable pregnancy outcomes. / Master of Science

This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity.

Gender-based violence has been recognized as a pressing mental health problem that is prevalent within South African society. Non-governmental organizations play a major role in addressing and highlighting the issue. These organizations make use of volunteers in order to assist in meeting their goals. The modernist perspective has been the dominant investigative mode when research into volunteers has been conducted. However, this study has been conducted with an emphasis on narrative. In its use of this constitutionalist and deconstructive perspective, it examines the identity of the research participants within the dominant social and cultural discourses that story their lives. This presents a major challenge to the modernist framework. In examining the life stories of the participants an emergent nature of identity is noted. Through the process of storying their lives and ascribing meaning to their experiences and understandings, the participants engaged in a process of constructing their identity. This research recognizes that identity is both multi-sited and multi-storied. The emphasis on personal agency enables the participants to restory their lives in the light of challenging prevailing discourses. It is in this process of challenge that they reauthor their lives and are in a position to change their own lives and the lives of others.