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Sexuality and Gender Division – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

Sexuality and Gender Division – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

by | Dec 2, 2025 | 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence, Sexuality and Gender Division (SGD)

Digital spaces have become the new frontier of misogyny — a “wild west” where women, girls and gender-diverse people face cyberstalking, image-based abuse, deepfakes, hate speech, coercive control and algorithmically amplified harassment.

The PsySSA Sexuality and Gender Division reflects on how digital violence is part of a broader continuum of patriarchy, discrimination and gender-power dynamics. Drawing on global insights and African realities, this contribution examines how technology – far from neutral – can reinforce and accelerate inequality, while exposing already-marginalised groups to intensified harm.

The piece also outlines key actions we must take as psychologists, educators, policymakers and communities to address this evolving landscape of violence.

Read the full contribution to explore how digital violence is reshaping gendered harm — and what we must do to resist it.

PsySSA Sexuality and Gender Division

Digital violence against women and girls, a new frontier in the “wild west” of misogyny.

When Laura Bates launched the “Everyday Sexism” Project in 2012, she started a quiet revolution.

She brought to our attention the link between casual, everyday forms of gender-based harassment (often experienced by women and girls in the streets of daily life) and the more serious manifestations of sexual and gender-based violence and femicide. Ideologically, they have the same origins, deeply rooted in longstanding gender-power structures: patriarchal control, objectification of women, and misogynistic violence.

Since then we have seen the rise of digital violence against women and girls (and sexual and gender minorities), still part of the same continuum of power-inflected animosity towards anyone and anything that disrupted heterosexual male entitlement.

This has manifested in phenomena which disproportionately affect women and girls; cyberstalking; the non-consensual sharing of intimate images; hate speech and harassment online to spread misogynistic, or abusive messages; misinformation and disinformation to damage a woman’s reputation or discredit her; coercive control (using technology, such as tracking devices or smart home devices, to monitor and control a person’s behaviour); and deepfakes (using technology to manipulate images or videos to create false and harmful content).

We also know that minorities across Africa experience digital harms. Speaking at a recent Cybersecurity and Digital Rights round table, Mansah Amoah noted that LGBTQI+ youth, migrants and individuals from rural or low-income contexts face heightened exposure to targeted harassment, disinformation, surveillance and exclusion. This is enabled by anonymity and algorithmic amplification which intensify hate speech and harassment.

In her new book, The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny, Bates argues that not only does technology not automatically liberate or equalise, it has the potential to reinforce, accelerate and embed patriarchal structures and a range of inequalities in ways that are often less visible.

It does this through Artificial Intelligence (AI) which amplifies sexism and misogyny by reproducing and magnifying biased data and social norms in self-learning systems whose inner workings and long-term effects we cannot fully trace or predict.
Because these technologies are often designed, funded and controlled by a narrow demographic (generally men, white, global‐north), says Bates, they reflect their priorities and blind-spots. There is a potential “wild-west” effect: the pace of technology innovation outstrips regulation, ethical oversight, social norms and protections.

The end result is a poorly regulated online world where women and girls (and minorities) aren’t just passive beneficiaries of technology, they are active targets and subjects of new forms of abuse, harassment and exploitation, with devastating social and psychological consequences.

Fixing this is not going to be easy, in a sense the battle has almost been lost. But we can do some of the following:

  • Interrogate who designs, who profits, whose bodies are used and whose safety is assumed in relation to online technologies, platforms and tools.
  • Pay attention to structural and systemic change in technology: algorithmic oversight and virtual space regulation is more powerful than only holding individuals to account.
  • Lobby for better (or better implementation of) laws on digital harms.
  • Adopt an intersectional view. Gender’s intersection with race, class, disability and global geography matters: those already marginalised may bear the brunt of technological inequalities in the form of facial-recognition bias, deepfake targeting and surveillance.
  • Expand our frameworks of sexual violence and gender harm to include these technologically mediated forms.
  • Conduct further research and scholarship in the area of digital violence against women, children and gender diverse people, so as to inform policy.
  • And, engage early and explicitly in our work as therapists, thinkers, educators and policy makers.

 

Mr Pierre Brouard – Sexuality and Gender Division (Additional Member)

World AIDS Day – 1 December 2025

World AIDS Day – 1 December 2025

by | Dec 1, 2025 | Health Psychology (HP), Mental Health Advocacy, Mental Health Calendar, Psychology in Public Service (PiPS)

World AIDS Day – 1 December 2025 

“Overcoming Disruption, Transforming the AIDS Response”

Today we honour the resilience of communities, practitioners, and health systems responding to HIV in the face of global funding cuts, service disruptions, and persistent inequities. As highlighted in contributions from our HPD and PiPS divisions, protecting the gains made in South Africa’s HIV response requires renewed commitment to both biomedical advances and psychosocial care.

We reflect on the continued psychological burden carried by people living with HIV, the impact of stigma and trauma, and the essential role of mental-health professionals in strengthening continuity of care, integrating mental-health screening, and championing trauma-informed, person-centred, and rights-based approaches.

This World AIDS Day, we stand with communities, researchers, and health workers who persist with dedication, empathy, and hope.

Read the PiPS and HPD contributions below:

 

Psychology in Public Service (PiPS) Division – Overcoming Disruption and Transforming the AIDS Response

On the first of December, we commemorate World AIDS Day, and this year in 2025, we actively reflect. Reflect on how we as communities, practitioners and even healthcare systems have adapted and continue to adapt and innovate, in the face of adversity and disruption. Our response to the HIV epidemic, has been one of the most ambitious in the world. However, this is not to say that it hasn’t been without challenges. This year the focus is on a renewed effort and sustainable commitments to revitalising not only our biomedical responses but also psychosocial interventions.

As psychologists working within the public service, we are reminded and attempt to remind all, that HIV is both a medical and mental health condition. Disruptions to care, amplify the psychological vulnerabilities of an already vulnerable group. Sadly, stigma remains a challenge faced all too often, while heightened anxiety, depression and trauma exposure are common.

Yet when faced with these challenges we as South Africans have found opportunities for transformation. We as mental-health professionals have the ability to shape a response, that is more dynamic, person-centred, equitable and resilient. However, this does mean that we are going to have to strengthen continuity of care, by integrating mental-health screening and brief interventions into HIV services. While actively addressing stigma and discrimination, including internalised stigma. Which impacts on adherence and wellbeing. We have to champion trauma-informed care, which can only take place effectively in the context of interdisciplinary collaboration. Leading to advancements in treatment literacy, community empowerment, and hopefully advances in prevention. While of course, looking after ourselves and colleagues, who face the reality of burnout, moral distress and secondary trauma.

In marking World AIDS Day, PiPS would like to acknowledge the continued psychological burden carried by people living with HIV, as well as their families, and the teams who treat and support them. We wish to pay tribute to the resilience of communities that continue to advocate for, organise and provide care for, in the face of adversity.

Overcoming disruption isn’t just possible, rather it’s been continuously underway in every interaction when practitioners engage with empathy, expertise and the facilitation of hope.

Health Psychology Division (HPD) – World AIDS Day

Today we commemorate World AIDS Day under the theme: “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response.”

We highlight a global funding crisis that is threatening decades of progress on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. This disruption is disproportionately affecting marginalized communities and leaving them behind. Despite these global setbacks, community-led organisations, researchers, and health workers continue to defend vital gains and push for a stronger, more equitable HIV/AIDS response.

Here in South Africa, researchers continue to produce vital evidence that guides policy and strengthens services for communities affected by HIV:

  • Securing our HIV response: The PEPFAR crisis in South Africa.
  • Structural determinants of HIV inequities in South Africa: Policy analysis of the national strategic plan for HIV 2023–2028.

Ending AIDS is possible. But only if we protect communities, fund the response, and uphold human rights.

Sexuality and Gender Division – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

Decolonising Psychology Division – 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

by | Nov 26, 2025 | 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence, Decolonising Psychology (DP)

PsySSA Decolonising Division (DPD)

She sat on the clinic chair with her shoulders folded inward, as if trying to shrink from the world that had suddenly become too loud, too cruel, too invasive. “I didn’t think it would follow me home,” she whispered. “But it’s on Facebook… on TikTok… even my little cousin saw it.”

She is nineteen. Her story is one I have heard too many times in different variations the trusting conversation, the shared photo, the quiet belief that intimacy will remain intimate. But in a matter of hours, her private world became public property. Her images were stolen, edited, mocked, and circulated by strangers who would never know her name yet felt entitled to her body, her dignity, and her pain.

There were no bruises to show the nurses. There was no fracture in the X-ray machine. But her world had collapsed. Her mother said she barely left her room. She said she barely slept. She said she no longer recognised her daughter’s voice.

This is the new face of violence in South Africa: silent, borderless, and devastating.

Our country has long been haunted by the shadow of gender-based violence. Statistics South Africa (2024) confirms that one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence, a number that reflects only those who managed to speak. But the terrain has shifted. Violence now slips into digital spaces, where the assault is repeated every time someone views, shares, downloads, or laughs. In this new frontier, harm does not end when the perpetrator walks away; it lingers, replayed endlessly in the survivor’s mind.

Amnesty International (2023) notes that nearly 40% of South African women have experienced online harassment. Behind that number are real lives: the Grade 12 learner bullied by classmates after her private messages were leaked; the young professional whose career stalled when intimate images were weaponised against her; the village girl whose family shamed her instead of supporting her. Digital violence strips away safety, identity, and belonging and the psychological wounds are often deeper than what we see in therapy rooms.

As psychologists, we need to recognise that digital violence is not about technology alone. It is born from old patterns of power, gendered, cultural, and historical that have simply moved into modern spaces. A decolonial perspective reminds us that Black women, especially, carry layered vulnerabilities. Their bodies have long been sites of exploitation and scrutiny, and the digital world merely amplifies those inherited injustices.

Responding to this requires more than therapy. It requires compassion, community, and the courage to confront the systems that enable this harm. It demands that we listen without judgment, validate without hesitation, and support without condition.
To every woman and girl who has endured this unseen assault: your pain is real. Your fear is understood. Your story matters.

And to all of us, families, educators, colleagues, partners may these days urge us not into slogans, but into empathy. We urge you to stand firm for dignity, for justice, and for a digital world where freedom does not come at the cost of one’s humanity.
Let us create homes, schools, workplaces, and digital spaces where a woman’s dignity is not negotiable, where her voice is safe, and where her existence does not come with a cost.

Because violence may evolve, but so must our humanity.

Student Wellbeing Self-Care Circle for Student Division Members

Student Wellbeing Self-Care Circle for Student Division Members

by | Nov 13, 2025 | Events and Announcements, PsySSA Announcements, Student Division (SD)

Student Wellbeing Self-Care Circle for Student Division Members

Hosted by the PsySSA Student Division

Join the PsySSA Student Division for an online Wellbeing Self-Care Circle designed to support students in the healthcare professions who are experiencing rising levels of burnout and compassion fatigue. A gentle space for collective healing, mutual care, and renewed hope.

Workshop Details:

  • Date: Wednesday, 26 November 2025
  • Time: 17:30 – 19:00
  • Online Via Zoom

Contact Information: psyssastudentchair@gmail.com

Burnout and compassion fatigue of students in the healthcare profession is at an all-time high. The aim of this session is to provide participants with an opportunity to disconnect from their busy schedules, debrief, and hold space for themselves and others to restore personal balance and enhance their wellbeing. Facilitated on The Work That Reconnects spiral model, sharing circles offer safe spaces to destress, reconnect and find hope and gratitude.

This wellbeing connection circle will be facilitated online to support students to centre themselves in times of uncertainty and anxiety and to foster a sense of connectedness (to self, to others, and to our physical and spiritual environment). As we share stories of coping and self-care, we foster mutual care, collective healing and hopeful mindsets.

Note: This session is interactive and participation is required by all those attending, however sharing personal stories is voluntary, and silent reflection is welcome. To respectfully hold a safe space in the sharing circle attendees must ensure they have sufficient connectivity / data to keep videos on for the full session.

Click Here to RSVP
Dr Avivit Cherrington

Dr Avivit Cherrington

Presenter

Dr. Avivit (Avie) Cherrington is an educational psychologist with expertise in the design and evaluation of community programmes for mental health and social wellbeing. Her research explores the value of integrating hope-enhancing strategies and participatory visual methods to foster personal and collective agency and catalyse meaningful transformative learning and social change. She has written chapters on Hope in various books in the field of positive psychology, including the Oxford Compendium of Hope (2025) and the APA Handbook of Positive Psychology (in press). She served two terms as the Chair of the Community & Social Psychology Division where she is currently the Treasurer, and is an Executive Member of PsySSA. She is also the co-founder of the Hope Table Gathering, an international, interdisciplinary community dedicated to the advancement of hope and a research associate with Nelson Mandela University.

“As a Hope Practitioner I am passionate about working with individuals and communities to shift mindsets and transform lives. I’m on a mission to spark hope and courage in those who have dedicated themselves to serving others.”

“Mental Health: Racism and Psychosocial Well-Being in South Africa” – Decolonising Psychology Division (DPD)

“Mental Health: Racism and Psychosocial Well-Being in South Africa” – Decolonising Psychology Division (DPD)

by | Oct 30, 2025 | Decolonising Psychology (DP), Mental Health Awareness Month

The Decolonising Psychology Division (DPD) contributes a profound reflection on how racism, historical trauma, and structural inequality continue to shape the mental health landscape in South Africa.

Read more below:

“Mental Health: Racism and Psychosocial Well-Being in South Africa”

– Decolonising Psychology Division (DPD)

 

South Africa’s enduring legacy of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid continues to generate racialisation and associated psychosocial harms. Psychological distress, mental injury, wounding, and trauma are not only individual experiences but also collective outcomes of structural inequality and racial oppression that affect the majority of the population (Kaminer & Eagle, 2020; Kleintjes & Schneider, 2023; Manganyi, 2019; South African Federation for Mental Health, 2020; Williams et al., 2008). These historical injuries are compounded by deep economic inequality, unemployment, gender-based violence, corruption, and the inadequate provision of health, education, and other essential services. Each of these realities impacts society in racially patterned and distorted ways. The question is no longer whether South Africans face increasing psychosocial pressures, but whether psychology and its related professions are prepared to meet this urgent challenge.

In October 2021, the American Psychological Association formally acknowledged its complicity in, and failure to address, the mental injury caused by racism and racialisation (American Psychological Association, 2021). Globally—and in South Africa—racial trauma is increasingly recognised as a significant mental health issue, with terms such as race-based stress, racial wounding, and collective racial wounding and healing gaining prominence (Cénat, 2023; Chávez-Dueñas et al., 2019; Sibrava et al., 2019). Cénat (2023) proposes a framework for complex racial trauma (CoRT), emphasising that racial harm is repetitive, cumulative, vicarious, and unavoidable, affecting the mental, physical, material, and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives.

While these frameworks are valuable, there is a danger of over-pathologising, medicalising, or biologising phenomena that originate in social and structural spheres (Benoist, 2022; Rashid, 2024, 2025). Moreover, mainstream psychological healing—typically talk therapy between practitioner and client—may not provide a complete answer to collective well-being. This approach is individualised, resource-intensive, and grounded in Euro-American praxis that is often contextually inappropriate.

Racial trauma, as a collective wound, requires collective responses and awareness of the social systems that perpetuate injury. At the personal level, healing involves a movement from wounded and fragmented selves toward creativity, wholeness, and community well-being. At the systemic level, collective agency is required to expose, disrupt, and dismantle social and structural oppression. What is urgently required is a decolonial praxis for healing.

A decolonial psychology and praxis of healing offers a pathway forward. It does not reject clinical evidence nor deny the importance of care; rather, it rebalances the relationship between evidence, culture, and context. It asks who defines stress, wounding, and trauma, whose knowledge counts, and how services can be designed with—not merely for—communities most affected by oppression. Beyond individualistic approaches, a decolonial psychology and community-healing framework addresses epistemic justice, systemic racial injuries, and the transgenerational transfer of trauma (Kiounani, 2019; Mullan, 2023; Seedat, 2023; Stevens & Sonn, 2021). Its focus includes intersectional understandings of oppression, multidisciplinary collaboration, the development of critical consciousness, and a reconnection to community-centred, participatory meaning-making and agency (Chioneso et al., 2020; Clay, 2017; Kessi, Suffla, & Seedat, 2022; Malherbe & Ratele, 2022).

Indigenous knowledge, embodied healing, neurobiological understanding, and spirituality are recognised as valid and vital foundations for collective care (Benoist, 2022; Cénat, 2023; Kiounani, 2019; Rashid, 2024, 2025; Rundall, 2019). A decolonial praxis focuses not only on healing but also on growth, emancipation, and resistance. This includes community-embedded and participatory approaches such as storytelling, commemoration, restorative dialogue, ritual, arts-based practice, land- and place-based work, and the rebuilding of shared meaning and social bonds (Morkel, 2011).

For healing to gain traction, community-based programmes and knowledge creation—along with language-appropriate and culturally grounded practices—are essential. Such initiatives should involve collaboration among community practitioners, activists, traditional healers, faith leaders, and a broad referral network (Benoist, 2022; Kleintjes & Schneider, 2023; Rashid, 2024, 2025). Reflective practice is equally vital for frontline workers, enabling them to recognise and metabolise vicarious trauma, which in turn protects both practitioners and their efficacy in serving communities (Masson & Graham, 2022).

A decolonial healing approach to racial trauma in South Africa implies that psychosocial well-being cannot be separated from broader social determinants such as livelihood support, safety, education, and gender-based violence prevention. Psychosocial well-being in South Africa requires both an honest reckoning with history and decisive action to dismantle the conditions that reproduce distress. Psychology and allied professions have an ethical and social obligation to revitalise and reimagine collective, culturally rooted, and emancipatory practices of healing that decolonise existing mental health models.

Honouring Mental Health Awareness Month with the PsySSA Trauma and Violence Division (TVD)

Honouring Mental Health Awareness Month with the PsySSA Trauma and Violence Division (TVD)

by | Oct 30, 2025 | Mental Health Awareness Month, Trauma and Violence Division (TVD)

Honouring Mental Health Awareness Month with the PsySSA Trauma and Violence Division (TVD)

The year’s theme, Mental Health in Humanitarian Crisis, reminds us that mental health care must remain at the heart of how we respond to trauma — both globally and locally.

  1. Thinking Local and Global
    Lynne Richards highlights the Gift of the Givers Foundation — a beacon of hope integrating mental health support into humanitarian aid, ensuring care for both communities and volunteers on the front lines.
  2. World Trauma Day – A Call to Highlight Psychological First Aid (PFA)
    Lynne Richards and Leonie Vorster emphasise the growing importance of Psychological First Aid (PFA) — practical, compassionate support that helps individuals stabilise and recover following trauma.

Together, these contributions from the TVD Division remind us that psychological wellbeing, resilience, and community care must remain central to all humanitarian and recovery efforts. ????

Read more below:

“Thinking local and global – Gift of the Givers foundation at the forefront of mental health in humanitarian crisis”

The PsySSA Trauma and Violence Division (TVD) – Lynne Richards

Nationally, we celebrate Mental Health Awareness month each October, during which we highlight the need for public education and destigmatisation of mental illness. This year, the World Health Organisation’s theme for World Mental Health Day, celebrated on the 10th of October, was ‘ Mental Health in Humanitarian Crisis’. Within South Africa, there are numerous examples of organisations at the forefront of humanitarian aid; however, the Gift of the Givers Foundation is a beacon of hope for many. Lynne Richards, the chairperson of the Trauma and Violence Division, had the pleasure of interviewing Zohra Sooliman, Counseling Psychologist, Co-founder of the Gift of the Givers Foundation and Director of the Gift of the Givers Careline counselling services. Within this interview, Zohra discussed the integration of mental health services for their volunteers as well as within communities ravaged by disaster, natural or man-made.

The Gift of the Givers Foundation was founded in 1992 by Dr Imtiaz Sooliman and Zohra Sooliman. The organisation has intervened in various relief missions locally and globally. Zohra reported that she foresaw the impact of secondary traumatisation on the volunteer responders, including paramedics, medical doctors, and allied health workers. It was this knowledge that encouraged her to advocate for the addition of psychosocial support for their teams. This was the beginning of a commitment to ensuring mental health care and psychosocial support were a central pillar in disaster relief efforts. The organisation offers returning volunteers trauma debriefing, along with free counselling by a pool of volunteers. This ensures that their teams receive sustainable and ongoing support. Moreover, the organisation’s work extends to the provision of peer assistance and the upskilling of local professionals.

Through missions to Congo Brazzaville and Gaza in 2009, the organisation sought to collaborate with local psychologists and social workers and offered training to students in social work and psychology. The goal was to ensure that the community would be able to empower itself long after organisations retreated. This commitment ensures mental health support is sustainable. During local disasters, such as the floods and looting, the Foundation provided trauma debriefing and identified and provided free services to those in need.

In situations where circumstances prevent the deployment of relief teams, such as in the crisis in Gaza, the Foundation has sought innovative ways to provide support. Remote peer support is provided voluntarily by South African psychologists. This intervention aims to create meaningful connections. For example, psychological support was provided to Palestinian medical students who were hosted at South African Universities for the completion of their studies. Furthermore, the Foundation is collaborating with volunteers in Egypt to assist refugee committees with the aim of upskilling them in trauma-focused modalities such as Eye-Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).
A key take-home message from the interview was highlighted: While basic needs such as clean water, nutrition, and medical services trump psychological services, it is essential to integrate psychosocial services into relief missions. Humanitarian crises call for novel approaches to mental health services, and the Gift of the Giver’s stands as an example of this.

“Word Trauma Day – A call to highlight Psychological First Aid following trauma”

The PsySSA Trauma and Violence Division (TVD) – Lynne Richards & Leonie Vorster

World Trauma Day, commemorated on 17 October, seeks to emphasise the importance of creating contexts in which people can recover and thrive following an incident of trauma (South African Government, 2025). Traumatic events or ‘Big T’ traumas are incidents which leave individuals vulnerable to negative psychological effects and trauma-based diagnoses (Gilmoor et al., 2019). Findings from the South Africa Stress and Health Study indicate that most South Africans experience at least one traumatic event during their lives, with many experiencing multiple traumatic events (Williams et al., 2007). With the mental health treatment gap increasing following the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for low-level interventions provided by cadres at a grassroots level to assist survivors of trauma remains.

Historically, trauma debriefing was encouraged following traumatic events, with many professionals and lay counsellors trained in this practice. However, research has provided no evidence of reduced mental health and the practice may even worsen mental health (Arancibia et al., 2022; Rose et al., 2002). Increasingly, Psychological First Aid (PFA) has been promoted as a suitable method for lay health workers and frontline workers to mitigate the impact of crises (Wang et al., 2021). According to the World Health Organisation (2011), PFS is described as ‘human, supportive and practical help to fellow human beings suffering a serious crisis event’.

PFA focuses on immediate, non-intrusive support and stabilisation of individuals in the immediate period following a crisis. The key principles of PFA include providing practical care and support following an assessment of an individual’s immediate needs. At its core, it involves using a person-centred approach to listening to the other without expecting them to talk or share their experience. Further, it encourages connecting people to information, services, and social support to ensure they are protected from further harm (World Health Organisation, 2011). The World Health Organisation manual expands on the Look, Listen and Link model (World Health Organisation, 2011).

Professionals within the field of psychology can play a larger role than the provision of the above service. Various organisations, including the World Health Organisation, provide manualised training which can be provided by facilitators, such as psychological practitioners, to upskill lay individuals within communities. This presents an opportunity for mental health professionals to create opportunities for social engagement and integration within the communities in which they live and work. Let us not miss this opportunity!

References

Arancibia, M., Leyton, F., Moran, J., Muga, A., Rios, U., Sepulveda, E., Vallejo-Correa, V. (2022). Psychological debriefing in acute traumatic events. Evidence synthesis. Medwave, 22(1), 002538. https://doi.org/10.5867/medwave.2022.01.002538
Gilmoor, A. R., Adithy, A. & Regeer, B. (2019). The cross-cultural validity of post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic stress symptoms in the Indian context: A systematic search and review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 4(10)439. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00439
Rose, S., Bisson, J., Churchill, R., & Wessely, S. (2002). [Psychological debriefing for preventing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cochrane Database Systematic Review,2, CD000560 https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD000560
South African Government (2025). World Trauma Day. https://www.gov.za/world-trauma-day-1
Wang, L., Norman, I., Xiao, T., Li, Y. & Leamy, M. (2021). Psychological first aid training: A scoping review of its application, outcomes, and implementation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(9), 4594. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18094594
Williams, S., Williams, D., Stein, D., Seedat, S., Jackson, P., & Moomal, H. (2007). Multiple traumatic events and psychological distress: The South African Stress and Health Study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 20(5), 845-855. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.20252
World Health Organisation (2011). Psychological first aid: Guide for field workers. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241548205

 

Lynne Richards

Lynne Richards

Lynne Richards is a South African clinical psychologist. She earned her Master of Social Science in Clinical Psychology from the University of Kwazulu-Natal in 2024. Her clinical experience includes an internship at King Edward VIII Hospital and King Dinuzulu Hospital Complex in Durban. Lynne completed her community service year in the Umgungundlovu District, working at Fort Napier Hospital, a specialist psychiatric facility, and Harry Gwala Regional Hospital, serving a diverse community. She also provided community-level services at East Boom Community Health Centre. This experience deepened her interest in helping trauma survivors, especially children and adolescents dealing with difficult circumstances. Her postgraduate research examined how neglect is represented in psychological literature, reflecting her focus on often-overlooked trauma types. Currently, Lynne is the Chairperson of the Trauma and Violence Division (TVD) of the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA), serving her second term. She is also a Project Manager at the KwaZulu-Natal Mental Health Advocacy Group, contributing to advocacy efforts.

Leonie Vorster

Leonie Vorster

Leonie Vorster is dedicated to ensuring the effective and just use of ethically sourced, contextually relevant, and usable information. She actively promotes empowerment by seeking the furthest limits of the possible and imaginative to make a positive difference and inspiring others to do the same. Her core strengths include:

1) Generating and drawing on evidence-based insights to facilitate decision-making and to make organisations, products, and services work (or work better)
2) Finding the best secondary and primary information sources for co-creating usable insights
3) Writing about things that matter, editing information to ensure effective communication, and presenting information in a memorable way through effective design
4) Making strategic recommendations and advising regarding the integration of available information to ensure relevant, usable insights
5) Evaluating AI Large Language Model responses for the South African context

Leonie has successfully completed more than 400 research and research-based consulting assignments for government, semi-government, private, and not-for-profit clients based in more than 40 countries on five continents. Leonie’s commitment to professional excellence is legendary, and her passion for quality and ethical standards is unwavering.

She holds a BA Communication Science and BA Honours in Psychology from the University of Johannesburg, and a Masters in Research Psychology from Nelson Mandela University, and is registered at the Health Professions Council of South Africa as Research Psychologist.