A Current Bibliography on African Affairs - Baywood Publishing

VOLUME 42, NUMBER 4—2009-2010 / 427
Africa. This population resembles in many ways other disadvantaged populations in
South Africa, and the outcome may have generalizability. A quantitative, factorial experimental
design was used to compare four stress management programs. Three were
conventional stress management programs derived from the literature, and the fourth
program was a creative activity program. Further research is recommended in combining a
stress management program with a creative activity group in reducing stress in a disadvantaged
population.
1441. Degenhardt, L. et al. TOWARD A GLOBAL VIEW OF ALCOHOL,
TOBACCO, CANNABIS, AND COCAINE USE: FINDINGS FROM THE WHO
WORLD MENTAL HEALTH SURVEYS. PLoS Medicine. 2008, 5(7):e141.
Alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use cause considerable morbidity and mortality, but
good cross-national epidemiological data are limited. This paper describes such data from
the first 17 countries participating in the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) World
Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative. Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is
not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug
policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones. Sex differences
were consistently documented, but are decreasing in more recent cohorts, who also have
higher levels of illegal drug use and extensions in the period of risk for initiation.
1442. Earls, F., G. J. Raviola, and M. Carlson. PROMOTING CHILD AND
ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HIV/AIDS PAN-
DEMIC WITH A FOCUS ON SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA. Journal of Child Psychology
and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines. 2008, 49(3):295-312.
The pandemic of HIV/AIDS is actually a composite of many regional and national-level
epidemics. The progress made in many parts of the developed and developing world is
tempered by the continued devastating consequences of HIV infection in sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA). This review focuses on the ways in which children and adolescents are
impacted by the epidemic, giving particular attention to their mental health. Preventive
interventions continue to manifest limited benefits in behavioral changes. More complex
causal models and improved behavioral measures are needed. In the African context, the
time has come to view pediatric AIDS as a chronic disease in which the mental health of
caregivers and children influences important aspects of disease prevention and management.
Increasingly sophisticated studies support earlier findings that social and psychological
functioning, educational achievement and economic well-being of children who
lose parents to AIDS are worse than that of other children.
1443. Ganasen, K. A. et al. UTILITY OF THE HIV DEMENTIA SCALE (HDS) IN
IDENTIFYING HIV DEMENTIA IN A SOUTH AFRICAN SAMPLE. Journal of
Neurosurgical Sciences. 2008, 269(1-2):62-64.
The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) has been traditionally used to screen for
cognitive impairment in a variety of dementing illnesses, including HIV associated
dementia. More recently, the HIV Dementia Scale (HDS) was developed as a bedside
evaluation test to differentiate patients with HIV-associated frank dementia from those who
are cognitively normal. This study assessed the sensitivity and specificity of the HDS
(using the MMSE as the gold standard) in a sample of 474 patients attending anti-retroviral
(ARV) services in the Cape Town metropole of South Africa. Our findings suggest that the