Publication: Exploring Psychosocial Well-being and Social Connectedness in Northern Uganda
Loading...
Published
2013-04
ISSN
Date
2014-04-16
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper describes research conducted as the first stage in the process of developing a structured interview schedule to assess psychological distress, empowerment, social connectedness, economic well-being, and other variables among women in the Acholi region of Uganda. An interview schedule was developed following a review of the literature, individual interviews with women in northern Uganda, and group discussions with community members, members of women's groups, and community leaders. Following initial testing of the entire interview schedule, the reliability and validity of two sections-measures of psychological distress and social connectedness, were explored in more detail. Initial analysis suggests that both are potentially useful with this population. However, the measure of psychological distress did not distinguish clearly between a group of women identified by a local community-based organization (CBO) as showing signs of psychological distress and a group of women showing no such signs. Additional work is required to confirm the validity of the psychological distress scale used. It was found that psychological well-being was more closely associated with the amount of social support a woman receives than with how many social activities or groups she is involved with. Involvement in groups may not, in itself, alleviate psychological distress, but the practical and emotional support provided by friends, neighbors, and relatives is likely to have a positive effect. Some evidence was found that there is a relationship between involvement in religious activities and psychological well-being. Psychological distress is often accompanied by poor physical health. Although further research is required to clarify the nature of these relationships, initial findings suggest that organizations that aim to improve psychological well-being would do well to address physical health problems as a priority, and may wish to explore ways in which women experiencing psychological distress could link with religious organizations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Horn, Rebecca. 2013. Exploring Psychosocial Well-being and Social Connectedness in Northern Uganda. Logica working paper series;no. 2. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17861 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Psychosocial Distress and Well-Being among Acholi Women in Northern Uganda(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04)This paper addresses two main topics: the effects of conflict on the psychological; and well-being of women methodological issues related to the measurement of psychological well-being. The literature on these topics is reviewed, and data from a qualitative study conducted in northern Uganda is used to explore them in more depth. Finally, the paper considers the ways in which conflict has contributed to women's psychological distress in northern Uganda, and the implications of this study for future programming and research.Publication Mental Health in Afghanistan : Burden, Challenges and the Way Forward(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-08)Afghanistan has been in internal and external strife for more than thirty years. Prolonged conflict and civil war have left millions dead, thousands with disabilities and massive internal and external population displacement. The situation has contributed negatively to every aspect of the country and society as the majority of the population has been traumatized by constant conflict, natural disasters, and the difficult Taliban years. There is ample evidence that these calamities have contributed to an increase in mental health problems and has been further complicated by growing level of drug abuse. As Afghanistan rebuilds itself, it is critical to understand the challenges and develop workable solutions. The paucity of high quality data on mental health problems and the lack of qualified human resources have hampered the development of cost-effective strategies and interventions to address the growing challenge of mental health in the country. There are few mental health facilities, and these facilities are scattered across the country with limited capacity and low levels of coverage. In addition, the population continues to face the main stressors with ongoing conflict in various parts of the country. To address mental health issues on a larger scale, this paper recommends public awareness-raising campaigns as a foremost prerequisite. It also proposes to draw on existing resources efficiently. Achieving the aforementioned objectives require political support by the Government of Afghanistan along with technical and financial support of the development partners. This will allow necessary expansion of mental health services and will build the capacity of mental health clinicians and public health experts in the country.Publication Measuring Psychosocial Wellbeing in Democratic Republic of Congo(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04)Since it began operating in the 1990s in northern Uganda, the LRA has inflicted enormous suffering on millions of civilians in several countries of the Great Lakes and Central African regions. In the 1990s and early 2000s, suc¬cessive Ugandan People s Defense Force (UPDF) operations in northern Uganda largely drove the LRA into the DRC and what is now South Sudan, and after 2008, into the CAR. Armed conflict negatively affects women and men in different ways and results in gender-specific dis¬advantages which are not always recognized or ad¬dressed in mainstream conflict and reconstruction programs and policies. The Learning on Gender and Conflict in Africa Program (LOGiCA) aims to increase gender-specific programming in post-conflict Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on de¬mobilization and reintegration (D&R) in the Great Lakes region (GLR), and gender specific issues arising from armed conflict including psy¬chosocial aspects.Publication Background Study for the National Strategy on Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction, 2015-2020(World Bank, Bucharest, 2015-10-15)The background study for the national strategy on social inclusion and poverty reduction 2015-2020 was produced under a RAS agreement with the Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Protection, and Elderly of Romania. The report is a companion volume of the strategy, adopted by the Romanian Government in May 2015, and summarizes the diagnostics and analyses carried out by the World Bank team to provide a sound empirical base for the strategy. Given the multi-dimensional nature of poverty, the report includes diagnostics and policy recommendations on employment, social protection, education, health, housing, social participation, as well as regional and rural development policies. The document is based on a combination of desk research, qualitative data analysis, new data collected by the World Bank team and analyses of administrative, census, and survey data. This included qualitative research (for example, case-studies in two counties, interviews with representatives of central governmental bodies, interviews with recipients and eligible potential beneficiaries of means-tested benefits and with social workers), and quantitative data collection and analysis (a census on social housing stock; census of frontline social workers; a consolidated database of physicians, representatives of the pharmacies, community nurses, and health mediators; administrative dataset with social services for elderly, social services for people with disabilities and specialized child protection services; analysis of poverty. The book is organized in four parts. The first part starts with an analysis of the trends in poverty and social exclusion over the past few years and with a poverty forecast for the next five years (2015 to 2020). The second part analyzes the sectoral policies that must be implemented to tackle the problems identified in the first part of the volume. The third part turns its focus to area-based policies and discusses regional disparities, urban-rural differences, and specific problems in small towns and villages, rural, and urban marginalized areas, and Roma and non-Roma communities. The fourth part discusses the actions needed to strengthen the capacity of the public system to reduce poverty and increase social inclusion.Publication Mental Health Patterns and Consequences : Results from Survey Data in Five Developing Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-01)The social and economic consequences of poor mental health in the developing world are presumed to be significant, yet are largely under-researched. The authors argue that mental health modules can be meaningfully added to multi-purpose household surveys in developing countries, and used to investigate this relationship. Data from nationally representative surveys in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Mexico, along with special surveys from India and Tonga, show similar patterns of association between mental health and socioeconomic characteristics across countries. Individuals who are older, female, widowed, and report poor physical health are more likely to report worse mental health outcomes. Individuals living with others with poor mental health are also significantly more likely to report worse mental health themselves. In contrast, there is little observed relationship between mental health and poverty or education, common measures of socio-economic status. The results instead suggest that economic and multi-dimensional shocks such as illness or crisis can have a greater impact on mental health than overall levels of poverty. This may have important implications for social protection policy. The authors also find significant associations between poor mental health and lowered labor force participation (especially for women) and higher frequency visits to health centers, suggesting that poor mental health can have significant economic consequences for households and the health system. Finally, the paper discusses how measures of mental health are distinct from general subjective welfare measures such as happiness and indicate useful directions of future research.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Support for Gender Stereotypes(Taylor and Francis, 2018-01-11)This paper examines the influence of the institutional nature of schools on gender stereotyping by exploring contrasts between non-religious and Islamic faith (that is madrasah) schools among secondary school-going adolescents in rural Bangladesh. In particular, differences in gender attitudes across school types are explored to elucidate what about schools matters. Using a uniquely designed survey to assess the influence of school type on student characteristics, we find large differences in stereotypical gender attitudes by school type and student gender. Madrasah students in general, and unrecognized madrasah students in particular, show unfavorable attitudes about women and their abilities compared to their peers in non-religious schools. However, these differences are diminished considerably in ordered probit models suggesting that school-level differences are explained by teacher characteristics such as the nature of teacher training and average family size of teachers. These estimated effects are robust to conditioning on a rich set of family characteristics.Publication The 2007 Meltdown in Structured Securitization(World Bank, 2010-02-01)The intensity of the crisis in financial markets has surprised nearly everyone. The authors search out the root causes of the crisis, distinguishing them from scapegoating explanations that have been used in policy circles to divert attention from the underlying breakdown of incentives. Incentive conflicts explain how securitization went wrong, why credit ratings proved so inaccurate, and why it is superficial to blame the crisis on mark-to-market accounting, an unexpected loss of liquidity, trends in globalization, and deregulation in financial markets. The authors' analysis finds disturbing implications of the crisis for Basel II and its implementation. They conclude by drawing out lessons for developing countries and identifying reforms that would improve incentives by increasing transparency and accountability in government and industry alike.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication International Patterns of Pension Provision(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-04)Cross country data on public and private pension schemes are presented and explained. Relevant World Bank demographic projections and other indicators previously reported in ‘averting the old age crisis is updated. Relationships between key indicators are highlighted. Many of the data are available as retrievable spreadsheets in the World Bank’s Social Protection Web-site at http://www.worldbank.org/pensions.Publication Digital Trade for Development(International Monetary Fund, 2025-01-22)This report explores the opportunities and challenges for developing economies arising from digital trade and discusses the role of international cooperation in tackling these opportunities and challenges. The report considers policy actions in the areas of digital infrastructure, skills, international support for capacity development, and the regulatory and policy environment. Specific policy issues include the WTO e-commerce moratorium, regulation of cross-border data flows, competition policies, and consumer protection.