Jason Bantjes
Biographic Data
| ID | 79037 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason Bantjes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason |
| FAMILY NAME | Bantjes |
| SIGNATURE | BANTJES J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stellenbosch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3626-9883 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 64 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The science of child and adolescent mental health in Brazil
Perspectives on educating lifelong learning in postgraduate orthopaedic training
BACKGROUND: Lifelong learning (LLL) is a core competency in medical education, reflecting the need for clinicians' knowledge and skills to remain current. While postgraduate curricula emphasise LLL, a gap remains in understanding how it is interpreted and enacted within orthopaedic training. Little is known about how trainees and trainers conceptualise LLL and how these perspectives shape their views on its development and assessment in orthopaed…
Developing, piloting, and evaluating a psychological first aid training for medical students in South Africa
BACKGROUND: Common mental disorders are highly prevalent among medical students. One way to ameliorate risk for mental disorders in this group is to improve medical students’ psychological literacy and provide psychoeducation to promote appropriate help seeking, which could potentially be achieved through changes to the formal curriculum. OBJECTIVES: Our aim was to develop, pilot and evaluate a context-sensitive and culturally appropriate Psychol…
Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of the Prevalence of Substance Use Among Adolescents in South Africa
Alcohol restrictions and suicide rates in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic
BACKGROUND: Alcohol use is a well-established potentially modifiable risk factor for suicide, yet few studies have investigated the impact of alcohol restrictions on suicide rates, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. METHODS: We used data from nationally representative annual surveys of postmortem investigations in 2017 (n=6117) and 2020/21 (n=6586) to estimate changes in suicide rates associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and relat…
Proximity to public green spaces and depressive symptoms among South African residents
Our findings suggest that public green spaces close to residential homes may be associated with a reduction in the occurrence of depressive symptoms among urban populations in resource-constrained settings like South Africa
Best-practice recommendations for campus-based suicide postvention intervention at a South African university in the Western Cape
The suicide of students on university campuses has significant impacts for students and staff. South African universities are not excluded from this impact. This study aimed to identify best-practice recommendations for a suicide postvention intervention programme at a South African university. In a single-round consensus study, suicide-bereaved students ( N = 25) and staff ( N = 21) at the university rated 126 statements in an online questionnai…
South African university students’ experiences of online group cognitive behavioural therapy
Mental disorders are common among university students. In the face of a large treatment gap, resource constraints and low uptake of traditional in-person psychotherapy services by students, there has been interest in the role that digital mental health solutions could play in meeting students' mental health needs. This study is a cross-sectional, qualitative inquiry into university students' experiences of an online group cognitive behavioural th…
Anxious, Depressed, and Suicidal
There is growing global awareness of the poor mental health of university students, as well as the need to improve students' access to services and expand the range of available evidence-based interventions. However, a crisis narrative is emerging, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, that runs the risk of positioning all students as potential patients in need of formal psychiatric interventions. Our aim in this commentary is to cri…
Does Reducing Alcohol Use Among People with HIV Alleviate Psychological Distress and Symptoms of Depression? A Randomized Controlled Trial in Tshwane, South Africa
Although alcohol use is associated with depression, it is unclear if brief alcohol reduction interventions can ameliorate depression and psychological distress among people with HIV (PWH). We use data from a two-arm randomised controlled trial to examine this question. PWH on antiretroviral treatment (ART) were randomly assigned to receive a brief intervention or treatment as usual (n = 622). Screening was done with the Alcohol Use Disorders Iden…
‘They Sent Me Out to School, and I Came Back with a Baby’
Exploring perinatal women’s experience of nonfatal suicidal behaviour (NFSB) could help illuminate the contexts in which perinatal suicide occurs and new ways to conceptualise maternal suicide prevention. Our aim was to explore perinatal women’s subjective experience of NFSB in South Africa. Data were collected via in-depth interviews with seven perinatal women hospitalised following NFSB. Thematic analysis showed how poverty and gender norms sha…
Suicide and self-harm in low- and middle- income countries during the Covid-19 pandemic
There is widespread concern over the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide and self-harm globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where the burden of these behaviours is greatest. We synthesised the evidence from the published literature on the impact of the pandemic on suicide and self-harm in LMIC. This review is nested within a living systematic review (PROSPERO ID CRD42020183326 ) that continuously iden…
Correlates of viral non-suppression among South African antiretroviral therapy users
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) users at two public health facilities in South Africa were assessed for major depressive disorder (MDD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and alcohol use disorder (AUD), using the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM5 (n = 688). Multivariate regression analysis was used to identify associations between mental disorders and unsuppressed viral load (VL), controlling for sociodemographic factors. All main effec…
Motorists’ perceptions of factors that influence payment of speeding fines in Cape Town, South Africa
Despite the aggressive enforcement of speed limits, speeding remains the second leading cause of fatalities in vehicle accidents in South Africa. Speeding fines are one mechanism for enforcing speed limits; however, these are only effective deterrents against speeding if fines are enforced. The potential effectiveness of speeding fines to increase safety on South African roads is rendered almost obsolete because so many offenders default on payme…
Suicide trends in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic
“I’m Not Afraid of Dying Because I’ve Got Nothing to Lose”
First-person narratives of suicidal behavior may provide novel insights into how individuals with lived experience of suicide understand and narrate their behavior. Our aim was to explore the narratives of young men hospitalized following nonfatal suicidal behavior (NFSB), in order to understand how young suicidal men construct and understand their actions. Data were collected via narrative interviews with 14 men (aged 18–34 years) admitted to ho…
Help-Seeking Intention in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Introduction: Many individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) delay seeking help, leading to greater illness severity, additional comorbidity, and increased functional impairment. Patterns of help-seeking for OCD have however not yet been described in South Africa, a low-and middle-income country with many health service challenges. Using the health belief model as a conceptual framework, study aims were to identify predictors of and ba…
Suicide Prevention in HIV Treatment Centres
Improving Detection of Depression in People Living with HIV
Mental health and academic failure among first-year university students in South Africa
Universities in South Africa face ongoing challenges with low rates of academic attainment and high rates of attrition. Our aims were to (1) investigate the extent to which common mental disorders evaluated early in the first year predict academic failure at the end of the year, controlling for sociodemographic factors and (2) establish the potential reduction in prevalence of failure that could be achieved by effectively treating associated ment…
Reducing nonfatal suicidal behaviour among university students
Campus-based suicide prevention is an important priority for universities. One approach could be to identify and treat common mental disorders, but it is unclear what potential reduction in suicide might be achieved by such an approach. Our aim was to quantify this potential effect on prevalence of nonfatal suicidal behaviour among first-year students. Data were collected from students at two South African universities ( N = 633) via an online su…
Moving Beyond Text-and-Talk in Qualitative Health Research
Qualitative researchers are increasingly making use of multiple media to collect data within a single study. Such approaches may have the potential to generate rich insights; however, there are also potential methodological challenges in simultaneously analyzing data from multiple media. Using three case studies from our work with women who had recurrent breast cancer in South Africa, we explore four challenges of using multiple media to collect …
Sources of Stress and Their Associations With Mental Disorders Among College Students
The college years are stressful for many students. Identifying the sources of stress and their relative importance in leading to clinically significant emotional problems may assist in the development of targeted stress management interventions. The current report examines the distribution and associations of perceived stress across major life areas with 12-month prevalence of common mental disorders in a cross-national sample of first-year colle…
Testing the feasibility of a media multitasking self-regulation intervention for students
What more do we want from clinical psychology
"What Can We Learn From First-Person Narratives?" The Case of Nonfatal Suicidal Behavior
Responding to the limitations of dominant biomedical quantitative approaches to suicide research, scholars have called for qualitative research documenting first-person narratives of suicide to gain access to the "true experts." This raises questions about what we can learn about suicide from first-person narratives. In this article, we critically examine the practice of analyzing first-person narratives of nonfatal suicidal behavior to make trut…
Epidemiology of suicide in South Africa
This article offers a synthesis and critical overview of published studies on the prevalence and correlates of completed suicide in South Africa. It examines the evidence that suicide is a serious public health problem and highlights what remains unknown about suicide in South Africa. Reflections are offered on the implications of these studies for subsequent research. Focus areas are suggested for future research in order to provide the informat…
Moving Beyond Text-and-Talk in Qualitative Health Research
Qualitative researchers are increasingly making use of multiple media to collect data within a single study. Such approaches may have the potential to generate rich insights; however, there are also potential methodological challenges in simultaneously analyzing data from multiple media. Using three case studies from our work with women who had recurrent breast cancer in South Africa, we explore four challenges of using multiple media to collect …
The cultural turn in critical suicidology
The cultural turn in critical suicidology notes the limitations of dominant acontextual, biomedical, quantitative approaches to suicide prevention. Qualitative methods are idealized within this cultural turn as the only way to advance suicidology. Qualitative methods, however, also have limitations. Drawing on our research with traditional healers in South Africa, the authors explore tensions associated with making truth claims based on qualitati…
This place is making me more depressed
People who attend hospital following a suicide attempt represent a well-delineated high-risk group of patients who may be amenable to targeted interventions to reduce the risk of suicidal behaviour. Little is, however, known about how hospitals in South Africa respond to suicide attempters, what quality of care these patients receive or what possibilities exist for hospital-based suicide prevention interventions. We describe an ethnographic study…
Our lifestyle is a mix-match
Practitioners of traditional African medicine (traditional healers) are an important part of the health care system in South Africa, yet their voices are often absent from discussions about public health. In this context, we set out to investigate how a group of traditional healers in South Africa understand suicide and suicide prevention. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 6 traditional healers and analysed using thematic co…
Young men in post-apartheid South Africa talk about masculinity and suicide prevention
We explored the experiences of a racially mixed group of young men in post-apartheid South Africa to investigate how they conceptualised suicide and document their suggestions for suicide prevention. Data were collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings suggest that in spite of socio-political transformation, young men in South Africa may not feel liberated to deviate from traditional g…
Troubling stereotypes
Despite the increasing prominence of competitive disability sport, the literature on the experiences of disabled athletes, particularly in low‐ and middle‐ income countries, is sparse. We aimed to describe the participation experiences of a group of athletes in competitive disability sport in South Africa, as well as exploring the ways they talk about issues of identity and self‐representation in the context of elite disability sport. Data were c…
Barriers and facilitators to participation in physical activity
Participation in regular physical activity promotes physical health and psychosocial well-being. Interventions are thus needed to promote physical activity, particularly among groups of individuals, such as persons with disability, who are marginalised from physical activity. This study explored the experiences of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with …
There is soccer but we have to watch”
Twenty years after the advent of democracy in South Africa (SA), there have been some successes in the achievement of greater equality, access and inclusion for many persons with disabilities. The move towards inclusive education may, however, have had unanticipated embodied consequences for people positioned discursively as included, but who in fact may in some respects be further marginalised than they had been under apartheid. We describe ethn…
Mental health and academic failure among first-year university students in South Africa
Universities in South Africa face ongoing challenges with low rates of academic attainment and high rates of attrition. Our aims were to (1) investigate the extent to which common mental disorders evaluated early in the first year predict academic failure at the end of the year, controlling for sociodemographic factors and (2) establish the potential reduction in prevalence of failure that could be achieved by effectively treating associated ment…
Reducing nonfatal suicidal behaviour among university students
Campus-based suicide prevention is an important priority for universities. One approach could be to identify and treat common mental disorders, but it is unclear what potential reduction in suicide might be achieved by such an approach. Our aim was to quantify this potential effect on prevalence of nonfatal suicidal behaviour among first-year students. Data were collected from students at two South African universities ( N = 633) via an online su…
The Benefits of Robust Debate About the Place of Qualitative Research in Suicide Prevention
It is important to give voice to people with lived experience of suicidal behaviour, but as with all narrative data, insider accounts raise methodological and interpretive challenges. A key question is that of how to work with narratives about suicide in a way that affirms both the value and the limitations of the data, so that qualitative evidence may responsibly be used to inform real-world interventions. Scholars who claim that insights gained…
Epidemiology of non-fatal suicidal behavior among first-year university students in South Africa
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher's website.We used a cross-sectional web-based survey and discrete-time survival analysis with person-year as unit of analysis and retrospective age-of-onset reports to estimate prevalence and predictors of suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt, and transitions from ideation to plan and attempt among South African university students ( n = 1402). The lifetime prevalence of ideation…
When they call me cripple
Central to the experience of disability are social and political forces and discourses which position people in particular ways. Little is known about the experiences of individuals with disabilities living in low-income and middle-income countries. We investigate the lived experience of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with cerebral palsy. Data were analysed using in…
Disconnection, reconnection and autonomy
Although young men are considered to be at particular risk of completing suicide in South Africa, very little is known about the reasons for this, or the way in which young men understand their own suicidal behaviour. In this study we set out to explore and describe the subjective experiences of four young South African men who had previously attempted suicide. Interviews were conducted and transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomeno…
Professional boundaries and the identity of counselling psychology in South Africa
The Development and Utilisation of a Suicide Risk Assessment Interview Schedule
Suicide is increasingly widespread in South Africa and is considered to constitute a serious public health problem. It is not only the most common emergency encountered by mental health care professionals but also has the distinction of being one of the few potentially fatal psychological conditions. The accurate determination of suicide risk in clinical practice is difficult. Despite vast amounts of research, no one assessment tool or method, wh…
Epidemiology of suicide in South Africa
This article offers a synthesis and critical overview of published studies on the prevalence and correlates of completed suicide in South Africa. It examines the evidence that suicide is a serious public health problem and highlights what remains unknown about suicide in South Africa. Reflections are offered on the implications of these studies for subsequent research. Focus areas are suggested for future research in order to provide the informat…
Masculinity and Mayhem
We describe an incident of disruptive behavior which occurred in a boys' school in South Africa, and the context in which it occurred. The incident of mayhem is deconstructed in order to illuminate what it reveals about the performance of masculinity in the school. Descriptions are offered of practices and rituals which show how gender is performed within an elite boys' school and how this incident illuminates the gender regime of the institution…
There is soccer but we have to watch”
Twenty years after the advent of democracy in South Africa (SA), there have been some successes in the achievement of greater equality, access and inclusion for many persons with disabilities. The move towards inclusive education may, however, have had unanticipated embodied consequences for people positioned discursively as included, but who in fact may in some respects be further marginalised than they had been under apartheid. We describe ethn…
When they call me cripple
Central to the experience of disability are social and political forces and discourses which position people in particular ways. Little is known about the experiences of individuals with disabilities living in low-income and middle-income countries. We investigate the lived experience of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with cerebral palsy. Data were analysed using in…
Suicide and poverty in low-income and middle-income countries
The Prevalence of Common Mental Disorders Among South Africans Seeking HIV Testing
Disconnection, reconnection and autonomy
Although young men are considered to be at particular risk of completing suicide in South Africa, very little is known about the reasons for this, or the way in which young men understand their own suicidal behaviour. In this study we set out to explore and describe the subjective experiences of four young South African men who had previously attempted suicide. Interviews were conducted and transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomeno…
Professional boundaries and the identity of counselling psychology in South Africa
Barriers and facilitators to participation in physical activity
Participation in regular physical activity promotes physical health and psychosocial well-being. Interventions are thus needed to promote physical activity, particularly among groups of individuals, such as persons with disability, who are marginalised from physical activity. This study explored the experiences of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with …
Human rights and mental health in post-apartheid South Africa
BACKGROUND: During the era of apartheid in South Africa, a number of mental health professionals were vocal about the need for socio-economic and political reform. They described the deleterious psychological and social impact of the oppressive and discriminatory Nationalist state policies. However, they remained optimistic that democracy would usher in positive changes. In this article, we consider how mental health professionals working in post…
Suicidal ideation and behaviour among persons seeking HIV testing in peri-urban areas of Cape Town, South Africa
Suicidal ideation and behaviour (SIB) are among the psychiatric sequela of HIV/AIDS. Few studies have however examined the prevalence and correlates of SIB among persons seeking HIV testing. We set out to document the prevalence and correlates of SIB among people seeking HIV testing in peri-urban areas of Cape Town, South Africa (SA). A cross-sectional research design was used to recruit a sample (n = 500) of individuals seeking HIV testing. Self…
Distress, depression and anxiety among persons seeking HIV testing
We investigated psychological distress and symptoms of depression and anxiety among 485 South Africans seeking HIV testing. The mean scores of the sample were 45.78 (SD = 16.81) on the Hopkins Symptom Checklist; 15.8 (SD = 12.4) on the Beck Depression Inventory and 12.44 (SD = 13.00) on the Beck Anxiety Inventory, which fell in the elevated, mild and low ranges on these instruments, respectively. For more than a third of participants, symptoms of…
Criterion Validity of Self-Reports of Alcohol, Cannabis, and Methamphetamine Use Among Young Men in Cape Town, South Africa
Prevalence of Traumatic Events and Symptoms of PTSD Among South Africans Receiving an HIV Test
Chronic traumatic stress and chronic pain in the majority world
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain have been identified as global health challenges for health professionals, and there is a robust literature linking PTSD and chronic pain. Much of the research is focused on high-income countries, leaving a serious gap when chronic pain is considered globally. Using the concept of Continuous Traumatic Stress (CTS), we look at how broader social conditions impact on the experience of chronic p…
The cultural turn in critical suicidology
The cultural turn in critical suicidology notes the limitations of dominant acontextual, biomedical, quantitative approaches to suicide prevention. Qualitative methods are idealized within this cultural turn as the only way to advance suicidology. Qualitative methods, however, also have limitations. Drawing on our research with traditional healers in South Africa, the authors explore tensions associated with making truth claims based on qualitati…
Young men in post-apartheid South Africa talk about masculinity and suicide prevention
We explored the experiences of a racially mixed group of young men in post-apartheid South Africa to investigate how they conceptualised suicide and document their suggestions for suicide prevention. Data were collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings suggest that in spite of socio-political transformation, young men in South Africa may not feel liberated to deviate from traditional g…
Substance Use and Self-Harm
Few qualitative studies have explored the relationship between substance use and self-harm. We employed a multiple-case study research design to analyze data from 80 patients who were admitted to a hospital in South Africa following self-harm. Our analysis revealed, from the perspective of patients, a number of distinct ways in which substance use is implicated in self-harm. Some patients reported that substance intoxication resulted in poor deci…
This place is making me more depressed
People who attend hospital following a suicide attempt represent a well-delineated high-risk group of patients who may be amenable to targeted interventions to reduce the risk of suicidal behaviour. Little is, however, known about how hospitals in South Africa respond to suicide attempters, what quality of care these patients receive or what possibilities exist for hospital-based suicide prevention interventions. We describe an ethnographic study…
The relationship between symptoms of common mental disorders and drug and alcohol misuse among persons seeking an HIV test
We studied 500 South Africans who sought an HIV test in a community outreach setting. On average, both men and women in the sample indicated hazardous and harmful alcohol use, as well as possible alcohol dependence. Men but not women among the sample experienced drug-related problems. Men were 1.64 times more likely than females to report problematic alcohol use and 4.88 times more likely than females to report drug use. Symptoms of posttraumatic…
Utility of the Beck Depression Inventory in measuring major depression among individuals seeking HIV testing in the Western Cape, South Africa
The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is often used to screen individuals for symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD). Yet, its effectiveness in correctly discriminating between MDD cases and non-cases among individuals seeking HIV testing has not been investigated. We report on the effectiveness of the BDI-I in predicting caseness for MDD with the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM (SCID) as a gold standard. A total of 500 HIV test-seek…
Non-fatal suicidal behaviour, depression and poverty among young men living in low-resource communities in South Africa
Depressive symptoms are more strongly associated with non-fatal suicidal behaviour than a range of proximal and distal economic factors among young men living under conditions of endemic poverty in South Africa. This has important public health implications and highlights the importance of increasing young men's access to psychiatric services and targeting depression as an integral component of suicide prevention in low resource communities
Understanding HIV Risk Behaviors Among Young Men in South Africa
Fitting in and looking pretty
Greater participation in social, sporting and cultural activities by disabled people is important for inclusion. We discuss the experiences of four students with visual impairment who are partnered with sighted dancers in an inclusive ballroom dancing project. Their talk is discussed against the background of common images about dance, disability and performance. Participants experienced inclusive ballroom dancing as enjoyable. They also indicate…
Medicine (48 works) · Psychology (47 works) · Psychiatry (41 works) · Clinical Psychology (24 works) · Poison control (24 works) · Environmental health (20 works) · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies (20 works) · Suicide prevention (20 works) · Mental Health Treatment and Access (19 works) · Mental health (18 works)