Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)

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    An exploration of the Lived Mental Health Experiences of psychologists working in the public sector during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Harvey, Zena; Laher, Sumaya
    The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted mental health in South Africa, exacerbating the existing mental healthcare treatment gap. Psychologists working at public institutions have been at the forefront of providing mental health care to the public during the crisis. However, psychologists themselves may be considered a vulnerable group at risk of developing adverse mental health outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, burnout and vicarious traumatisation due to the nature of their profession. This vulnerability may have been further amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The well-being of psychologists is integral to ensuring high quality patient care and to the overall management of pandemic and other disease outbreaks. There remains a significant dearth in the available literature examining the lived mental health experiences of psychologists, especially those working in the public sector. This study aims to address this pertinent gap by investigating the lived mental health experiences of ten psychologists employed in South African public institutions, amidst COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews comprising sixteen questions were conducted with each psychologist. The following five overarching themes emerged from an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA): ‘The personal effects of COVID-19 on psychologists’, ‘Changes to therapy During COVID-19’, ‘Experiences of COVID-19 exposure in public hospitals’, ‘Coping Mechanisms’ and ‘Survivor Guilt: Privilege during the pandemic’. A discussion of the abovementioned findings highlighted the importance of addressing, prioritising and monitoring the psychological wellbeing of these public sector-psychologists, during pandemic and other disease outbreaks to increase their support structures.
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    Classical Liberalism and the Distribution of Benefits and Burdens with respect to Health-Care
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Tsengiwe, Siyabulela Thomas; Allais, Lucy
    The South African government is proposing major health policy reforms, the National Health Insurance (NHI), in response to extreme inequalities in healthcare, where the middle and upper classes have access to quality healthcare in the private sector and the majority is subjected to poor healthcare in the public sector. The debate is fierce among South Africans as to what should be the appropriate healthcare policy for the country. Fundamentally, healthcare is an ethical issue of how benefits and burdens should be distributed in society and can better be understood through moral reflection. At the heart of this study is a critical review of one of the influential theories of justice, namely, classical liberalism that normally finds its expression in social and economic policies and in this case the focus is on healthcare. The question that this study seeks to answer is: can classical liberalism produce the right distribution of benefits and burdens with respect to healthcare? The suggestion of this study is that classical liberalism gives an inadequate account of how to distribute benefits and burdens with respect to healthcare. For more coherent accounts, the study proposes that we need to look in the direction of John Rawls and social equality. Government’s approach seems to borrow from elements of Rawls and social equality.