Socioenvironmental Determinants of Psychological Functioning, Mental Health and AIDS in Mali

NCT00339391 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 1002

Last updated 2019-12-05

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

This project is a collaboration between the Centre Regional de Medecine Traditionnelle (CRMT) of the Malian National Institute of Public Health Research (INRSP) and the Section on Socioenvironmental Studies (SSES). These units developed a three-pronged protocol reflecting their joint and individual concerns:

1. Effects of occupational complexity on psychological functioning. The project tests a theory derived from previous SSES research demonstrating that in industrialized societies doing relatively self-directed, substantively complex work increases self-directed orientations to self, society and family and promotes effective intellectual functioning. It uses sociological survey methodology to determine the generalizability of this theory to an essentially pre-literate, preindustrial society.
2. Effects of work-related stress on mental health. Earlier SSES work demonstrated that stressful work conditions lead to distress in industrialized societies. This project extends the investigation of these effects to a non-industrialized setting. It also extends the investigation of work-related stress to include work-related migration, resting a hypothesis that relates equally to SSES and CRMT concerns: that individuals from rural ethnic groups with a cultural tradition of work-related migration will show fewer mental health problems when migrating for nontraditional work than those from cultures without such a tradition. Mental health problems are assessed through: a) adaptations of standard survey-based psychological measures of components of distress, b) general and culture-specific survey-based psychiatric screening questions, and c) a psychiatric interview conducted by a CRMT psychiatrist trained in internationally accepted diagnostic procedures and knowledgeable about local cultures.
3. The effects of migration and cultural and socioeconomic factors on AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. The survey addresses concern regarding the degree of knowledge about the nature of AIDS among rural Malians who are relatively isolated from urban oriented sources of information about culturally non-traditional issues. It also examines how socio-cultural background and migration for work affect AIDS related attitudes and self-reported behaviors in an African society where estimates of HIV prevalence are still relatively low (less than 2%), compared to those of other sub-Saharan African countries.

Although these prongs are distinguishable, each requires a longitudinal design, a representative sample, extensive information about responders' social and cultural backgrounds, occupational histories, work conditions, and personal orientations and beliefs. Because of their overlapping theoretical approaches and methodological requirements, combining them in one project increases the richness and efficiency of the data collected for each.

Conditions

  • AIDS
  • Stress

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

    lead NIH

Principal Investigators

  • Kathleen Merikangas, Ph.D. · National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Eligibility

Min Age
16 Years
Max Age
50 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2001-08-19
Completion
2016-11-30

Countries

  • Mali

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00339391 on ClinicalTrials.gov