A scoping review of the trauma interventions for children in South Africa
| dc.contributor.advisor | Isaacs, Serena | |
| dc.contributor.author | Lukic, Hannah | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-03-03T07:06:31Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-03-03T07:06:31Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | For many South African children, exposure to many traumatic events and experiences, such as maltreatment, physical and sexual abuse, and community violence, is commonplace in their daily lives. Despite this, there is a scarcity of research that explores the nuances of the South African trauma landscape, as well as the interventions which are implemented to address it. This scoping review aimed to address both gaps by providing an outline of the unique characteristics of childhood trauma in South Africa and a synthesis of the interventions implemented to date. The search terms that were utilised to do so, were: trauma AND intervention OR treatment OR therapy OR “randomised controlled trial” AND child OR adolescent OR teenager OR youth AND “South Africa” OR “South African”. The electronic databases consulted for this review were EBSCOhost Web (Academic Search Complete, APA PsychArticles, CINHL Plus with Full Text, ERIC, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition and MEDLINE) and PubMed. This search yielded 2165 outputs, of which 19 were included in this review and subject to quantitative and narrative analysis. This study found that three distinct descriptors were used to describe childhood trauma in South Africa, namely: an exceptionally high prevalence of trauma, poly-victimisation and the inherently ongoing nature of trauma exposure. Each of these presented unique complexities for treatment. Of the interventions reviewed in this study, art and play therapies emerged as the most commonly utilised treatment approach, followed by trauma-focused cognitive-behavioural therapy (TF-CBT). While this study provides an overview of existing South African literature, it also aims to encourage future research in this field by highlighting its scarcity. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10566/20154 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Western Cape | |
| dc.subject | Childhood trauma | |
| dc.subject | Childhood trauma exposure | |
| dc.subject | Treatment | |
| dc.subject | South Africa | |
| dc.subject | Scoping review | |
| dc.title | A scoping review of the trauma interventions for children in South Africa | |
| dc.type | Thesis |