ABSTRACT
Health psychology as a discipline has existed for more than four decades and is primarily concerned with research, theory, and practice at the nexus of psychology and health. The discipline is well established across Europe, the United States, and Australia with health psychology societies, postgraduate programmes, conferences, and academic journals dedicated to the discipline in the majority of these countries. However, in South Africa, health psychology remains a broad umbrella term under which psychologists and other health care professionals conduct research. Health psychology is concerned with the biological, social, psychological, contextual, and structural drivers of health and illness, and relies on theory and empirically-driven research to identify and understand important links between health and behaviour. In South Africa, where a large proportion of the population faces multiple co-occurring disease epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, TB, COVID-19, diabetes, and heart disease, there is a need for a uniting sub-discipline like health psychology to focus intervention efforts and to meet the sustainable development goals. The recent re-establishment of a special interest group in health psychology in the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA) is an important first step. In this article, and as members of the newly re-established special interest group in health psychology, we call attention to the need to promote health psychology in South Africa. In this article, we describe the paradigmatic traditions and theoretical models that inform the discipline. We then argue why health psychology should be prioritised again and recommend future directions for health psychology in South Africa. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of South African Journal of Psychology is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Medical staff fighting the COVID-19 pandemic are experiencing stress from high occupational risk, panic in the community and the extreme workload. Maintaining the psychological health of a medical team is essential for efficient functioning, but psychological intervention models for emergency medical teams are rare. AIMS: To design a systematic, full-coverage psychological health support scheme for medical teams serving large-scale emergent situations, and demonstrate its effectiveness in a real-world study in Leishenshan Hospital during the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China. METHODS: The scheme integrates onsite and online mental health resources and features team-based psychosocial support and evidence-based interventions. It contained five modules, including a daily measurement of mood, a daily mood broadcast that promotes positive affirmation, a daily online peer-group activity with themes based on the challenges reported by the team, Balint groups and an after-work support team. The daily mood measurement provides information to the other modules. The scheme also respects the special psychological characteristics of medical staff by promoting their strengths. RESULTS: The scheme economically supported a special medical team of 156 members with only one onsite psychiatrist. Our data reflected that the entire medical team maintained an overall positive outlook (7-9 out of 10 in a Daily Mood Index, DMI) for nearly 6 weeks of continuous working. Since the scheme promoted self-strengths and positive self-affirmation, the number of self-reports of life-related gains were high and played a significant effect on the DMI. Our follow-up investigations also revealed that multiple modules of the scheme received high attention and evaluation levels. CONCLUSION: Our quantitative data from Leishenshan hospital, Wuhan, China, show that the programme is adequate to support the continuous high workload of medical teams. This scheme could be applied to medical teams dealing with emergent situations.