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An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa

Infant Mental Health (IMH) is a concept developed by psychologists, psychiatrists, child development specialists, to describe preverbal children's emotional well-being. In everyday life, however, people may not be familiar with this idea, use these terms or think about infant well-being in the same...

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Main Author: Mafela, Sedzani
Other Authors: Ross, Fiona
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Social Anthropology 2024
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access_status_str Open Access
author Mafela, Sedzani
author2 Ross, Fiona
author_browse Mafela, Sedzani
Ross, Fiona
author_facet Ross, Fiona
Mafela, Sedzani
author_sort Mafela, Sedzani
collection Thesis
description Infant Mental Health (IMH) is a concept developed by psychologists, psychiatrists, child development specialists, to describe preverbal children's emotional well-being. In everyday life, however, people may not be familiar with this idea, use these terms or think about infant well-being in the same way. The research therefore posed the general question 'do infants have mental health?' to a range of participants, including parents, grandparents, and those who haven't had children. A decolonial feminist-queer approach was used. The research revealed that although people did not think of their children's well-being using the language of IMH, they had their ways of ensuring the 'mental health' of their infants. Secondly, mental health is often understood in terms of illness and not as wellness. Lastly, although infants were not thought to have 'mental health', the participants agreed on the presence of mental health in infants and used a variety of terms to describe this concept in their own words as opposed to the formal descriptions according to IMH paradigm.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:34:39.078Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2024
publishDateRange 2024
publishDateSort 2024
publisher Social Anthropology
publisherStr Social Anthropology
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/39639 An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa Mafela, Sedzani Ross, Fiona Social Anthropology Infant Mental Health (IMH) is a concept developed by psychologists, psychiatrists, child development specialists, to describe preverbal children's emotional well-being. In everyday life, however, people may not be familiar with this idea, use these terms or think about infant well-being in the same way. The research therefore posed the general question 'do infants have mental health?' to a range of participants, including parents, grandparents, and those who haven't had children. A decolonial feminist-queer approach was used. The research revealed that although people did not think of their children's well-being using the language of IMH, they had their ways of ensuring the 'mental health' of their infants. Secondly, mental health is often understood in terms of illness and not as wellness. Lastly, although infants were not thought to have 'mental health', the participants agreed on the presence of mental health in infants and used a variety of terms to describe this concept in their own words as opposed to the formal descriptions according to IMH paradigm. 2024-05-17T09:43:57Z 2024-05-17T09:43:57Z 2023 2024-05-17T07:04:07Z Thesis / Dissertation Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/39639 eng application/pdf Social Anthropology Faculty of Humanities
spellingShingle Social Anthropology
Mafela, Sedzani
An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
thesis_degree_str Master's
title An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
title_full An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
title_fullStr An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
title_short An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
title_sort anthropological exploration of individuals perceptions on infant mental health in south africa
topic Social Anthropology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/39639
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