super-nkosi-theot-blog

[super-nkosi-theot-blog]

MY EXPERIENCE ON WARWICK TOUR

MY EXPERIENCE ABOUT WARWICK

It was a great and educational trip that we had.  Warwick is a big Centre with many informal traders. It has BOVINE HEAD COOK, HERB MARKET EARLY MORNING MARKET AND MUSIC BRIDGE. There are terminal buses, taxi ranks. Thousands of people use Warwick a day, every day. To me it seems like the area create more jobs opportunity to informal traders, informal traders they pay a fee to sell their goods at the market. Warwick has a strong management who defend the area when the city want to demolish some of it site to build mall. They defend in the interest of informal traders who sell goods to take care of their families. There are also trained tour guide who was trained to help tourists to explore the Warwick Beauty and its unique and special products. Most of the goods sold at Warwick are Zulu traditional attire, beards work, fruits and vegetables, Herbs, and cow head(inhloko). The area is useful to people who use it because they make money. Hey, I had a chance to take a cow head cook, it nice not that I never ate it before but that one at Warwick had no rules or culture was just a poor head cook and it tasted nice, I wish to go there and have it next times. I love most of the goods sold there, I even bought some other stuff to use for my pediatric pracs. At warwick there are also train stations where people from south and north of Durban jump off from the train.

IT WAS THE BEST TRIP

#OT IN THE MAKING

[super-nkosi-theot-blog]

BLOGGING

Blogging for students is an effective tool for sharing ideas, knowledge ,expressing feelings and thought and experience, but it can be a very threatening task. This means that blogging for students has it own advantages and disadvantages. One of the most important advantages is that blogging allows for critical thinking and gives students the opportunity to explore different topics and acquire more knowledge about that specific topic, thus it can be a good tool for improving learners critical thinking skills. However, blogging can be time consuming and threatening especially if the student does not understand the topic very well

For me blogging is threatening sometimes because I fear what other people reading my blog would think after they have read my blog e.g. I am scared that sometimes I can express my thoughts inappropriately. Writing itself is hard especially if it has to be read by someone else. I personally find blogging very time consuming as well and difficult because I have to think and sometimes access other sources of information to get extra knowledge about that specific topic, so it is just an extra work for me.

According to my own opinion blogging can be useless especially if you do not get a feedback or if no one share different ideas from your own, based on that specific topic because I am certain that blogging was never meant for posting alone, therefore what is the point of blogging if you won’t get the opportunity to learn from others as well. I think blogging for students can be very helpful if students have the opportunity to read other student’s blogs and interact online on the same topic to share their different views and experiences based on that specific topic. This can improve peer learning thus give better understanding for that specific topic. However, allowing students to see and comment on other student’s blogs can be threatening as well since students may fear to criticize on their peer’s blogs.

I also believe blogging can be effective tool in learning but that will depend on the goals and purpose for using blog from that specific individual e.g. Some individuals may want to post alone and others may really want to get certain message across, to inspire others, share ideas etc. and this also relies on whether they get the feedback or different views from other people since this can impact on the individual’s motivation to continue with using the blog. What would be the point of sharing ideas if no one is going to respond to share their own opinions about your ideas as well? Therefore, other people may not see blogging as an effective tool to use especially if they don’t benefit from it, they may just see it as a whole bunch of work.

Blogging or no blogging you can still acquire more knowledge from other people, share and or inspire others the way you would love to. Just be the inspiration wherever you are.

UKZN OT3

[super-nkosi-theot-blog]

PORTRAYAL OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN FILM

The media are believed to play a major role in contributing to mental illness stigma via the images they portray of characters with mental illness as well as the misinformation communicated, inaccurate use of psychiatric terms, and unfavourable stereotypes of people with mental illness (P.A. Stout et al. 2004). I think mental illness stigma and misunderstanding is still a problem in our context due to many factors such as cultural beliefs etc. However, I believe that portrayal of mental illness in film can be very useful in reduction of mental illness stigma and in improving understanding of mental illness in general. According to Banduras social learning theory ,learning can be achieved through not only direct experience but also from the observations.A person can learn a lot about mental illness through the media. Therefore media has a significant role in enhancing knowledge and understanding of mental illness in our society thus reduce stigma. However ,it is very sad to say that media itself does contribute to misunderstandings and stigma to mental illness.

I am happy to say that I watched a very wonderful movie called ‘I am Sam’. In this movie they show how intellectual impairment affects the roles and occupation of the individuals with the impairment,including their families or loved ones. It also shows how people with impairment are labelled and perceived in the society in general. What I like about this movie is that it shows all possible deficit a person with the impairment may present with and they used common life situations that everyone come across ,showing how these deficits in intellectual functioning affects the person ability to problem-solve and or cope in those situations.

Looking at the diagnosis itself as it affects the individual adaptive behaviour and intellectual functioning or mental capacity which leads to poor learning,problem solving,planning ,reasoning,poor social skills etc. In this movie they show how the impairment affect adaptive behaviour and or social skills of the individual. This contribute to poor interpersonal relationships of people with the impairment due to lack of understanding of how to deal with the behaviour. This then emphasis the importance of family or caregiver education based on particular issues to increase their insight.

Although intellectually impaired individuals have deficit in intellectual functioning but they also have capabilities or particular skills that can be used or polished to make their lives more meaningful e.g. they can work in sheltered employment etc depending on the severity of the impairment. It is also important to look at those important roles of the person with intellectual impairment and intervene to enable them fulfil those roles ,thus give them that sense of self-worth and sense of independence.

In addition the movie also conveys that people who are mentally challenged are also very important and that they can as well play a significant role in someones life.They have families who loves and cares about them. Meaning that if somehow these individual’s are mistreated and or misunderstood their families also get affected. Most importantly these people also have feelings and love ,therefore they should not be treated like objects in any way. More education on mental illness is needed to increase insight of people thus reduce stigma on mental illness because at the end of the day we are all important.

The life lesson I got from this movie is that ,no matter how good our lives may seem but that doesn’t guarantee happiness. We should learn to appreciate what we have all the time and never compare our lives to someone else’s life.

[super-nkosi-theot-blog]

BLOG About life esidimeni

 I think the core reason for me not knowing about the saga of the life at esidimeni it is because it involves government department negligence of laws and violation of them during the movement of the citizen with NGOs. Thus, Government lawyers in the Life Esidimeni hearings have managed to stop the media from speaking to families and lawyers. even preventing fact checking of what journalists have heard in complicated testimony to hide their violation of peoples right.

The hearing process is discussing why and how people were moved last year from Life Esidimeni homes and hurriedly moved into hospitals or unhealthy NGOs‚ leading to dozens of died. The state has admitted it’s handling of the disaster was wrong and everyone is working together to find answers‚ give families closure and a pay-out.

The proceedings were only opened to families and journalists and were broadcast live but media interviews with anyone involved were not allowed. The lawyers were legally entitled to do this‚ but it was not in the spirit of a healing arbitration process. Government did well to apologise for the tragedy‚ took responsibility as the advocate's opening statement put it‚ and allow the families some closure. the Gauteng government imposed the media

The state has used a section in the arbitration hearing, coming to an agreement that family lawyers signed to ban journalists from speaking to anyone.  Given that the media exposed some of what occurred in the Life Esidimeni saga and is faithfully reporting on the arbitration process on behalf of the public‚ to silence them like this is not in line with the Constitution or fair, and it left many people of this country not knowing the truth about the saga at life at esidimeni. At first the number of people who died was less than the actually number because the information was withheld for the public thus who ever gave this information to the media was hiding that more people died with negligence and brutality.

[super-nkosi-theot-blog]

BLOG 1 preparation for prac

This is a first week of the first third year psych practicals. Everyone is I panic and the stress level has increased🙁🙁 because it is a challenging block and it require thorough preparation before one goes to it.

According to WHO,mental health is a state of well being in what individual realises his or her own abilities ,can cope with normal stresses of life,can work productively and fruitfully ,and able to make a contribution to his or her community. Mental illness hinders quality of life for many individuals worldwide and causes a burden to many families or caregivers,most unfortunate is that it is still associated with a stigma in many communities due to many factors such as lack of knowledge,cultural beliefs /attitudes etc.As known ,Occupational therapy plays a significant role in mental health. As OT one of our mission is to promote one quality of life regardless of their impairment or malfunction by enabling them to become independent as possible taking into account their own potential abilities in relation to their physical and social environment  thus reduce burden in family/caregivers.

To prepare for psych prac I read few articles. Maud J L Graff et al. reported that community occupational therapy intervention is cost effective and specifically reduces costs of informal caregiving for patients with dementia. How wonderful is that?Dementia is one of the three major diseases with regard to health care consumption and is a major cause of disability and burden of care in elderly people. It is a chronic and degenerative disease that causes disorders of memory, behavioural problems, loss of initiative, loss of independent functioning in daily activities, and loss of participation in social activities. These problems decrease well being of those with dementia and their caregivers,put pressure on family relationships and friendships,and cause high healthcare costs (Maud J L Graff et al ,2007). This entails the importance of implementation of effective and efficient health care interventions that will increase independence and well-being of the patients and decrease burden on caregivers as this may improve sense of competence on caregivers. I found this article very encouraging as it shows the significance of OT in the community in general ,therefore encourages me to strive to do the best I can when implementing interventions to ensure that they are effective and efficient. However, this will require more learning and experience which I hope that is what I will get from this block.

I also read a book by Creek J. (2002) Occupational therapy and Mental health 3rd Edition ,Working in a transcultural context (pp. 471-490 ). I saw this as important to me because I sometimes tend to get very nervous and not confident when I have to work with someone from a very different cultural background from mine. According to Gujral S. (2002) Differences between the practitioner and the client in values ,beliefs and ways of doing things ,complicated by language difficulties ,provide considerable challenges to all those engaged in the therapeutic process. For me this emphasizes the importance of cultural sensitivity and understanding of other people cultures. One of the things I learnt is that even though you may share a similar culture e.g. Zulu culture  with the client it is important to get the client own views based on their culture as people have different cultural views and therefore have different ways of doing things. Culture affects how problems ,treatment goals are defined and how meaningful activities are defined and chosen ,therefore as a therapist it is important to provide intervention that is client centered and or holistic. In order to formulate and implement therapeutic and meaningful treatment goals it is very important to take into account the cultural aspects when assessing the client needs.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. So learn ,learn ,learn and learn!!!!!

#ukzn ot3