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10 October 2018 | Story UFS
UFS School of Nursing gets funding for mental health project
Ronelle Jansen received research funding to provide adolescents with improved access to mental health services and care.
Ronelle Jansen from the School of Nursing at the University of the Free State (UFS) received research funding as part of a multistakeholder capacity-building project to provide adolescents with improved access to mental health services and care in PHC (primary healthcare) settings. 

The research aims to develop and implement a mobile mental health (mHealth) application screening tool for primary healthcare workers (PHCW) to identify adolescent mental health problems and provide mental healthcare training. 

Under pressure 

Jansen (UFS team leader) says mental health screening is sometimes lacking at the clinic level, because the clinics are so busy. “PHCW are under huge pressure due to the number of people they have to see every day, and due to severe staff shortages.

“There is, amongst others, a huge amount of paperwork that needs to be completed for each patient. The nurses only get about 10 minutes to see each patient and mental health screening is seen as time consuming.”

Early identification 

Jansen says the mHealth tool will focus on adolescents and they hope that the mobile application will help nurses with early identification of mental health problems. The clinic staff will then be able to treat and refer the patient correctly. 

She says they hope an accessible and user-friendly mobile tool will also help to motivate PHCW to more regularly screen for mental health problems.

This research is a three-year project co-funded by the Erasmus + programme of the European Union. Nine universities will collaborate on the project. Other partner institutions include the Turku University of Applied Science in Finland (project coordinator); Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany; Riga Technical University in Latvia; the universities of Stellenbosch; Cape Town; Pretoria; the University of Zambia and the Lusaka Apex Medical University.

Jansen says the benefit of the research may be that PHCW will be better empowered to screen for mental health problems, with the aim to improve adolescent mental healthcare and train competent PHCW.

News Archive

Most read articles in international journal authored by UFS academics
2011-10-06

 
Prof. James du Preez, Senior Professor and Head of the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology, and Prof. Lodewyk Kock, Outstanding Professor in the same department.
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs

FEMS Yeast Research, the top international journal in this field of research, recently announced their three "most read articles" of 2011, based on the number of downloads from their website. Of these three published papers, two are from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State (UFS). They are:

The article with the title, The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the main character in beer brewing, was authored by Prof. Bettie Lodolo and Mr Martin Brooks (Brewing Consultant and Chief Brewer of the SAB Ltd. Brewing Centre of Excellence in Alrode, Johannesburg, respectively), Prof. Lodewyk Kock (Outstanding Professor in the UFS Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology) and Prof. Barry Axcell (Global Chief Brewer, SABMiller, Sandton). Prof. Lodolo is also an Affiliated Professor in the UFS’s Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology,

The authors of the second paper entitled The alcohol dehydrogenases of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: a comprehensive review, are Dr Olga de Smidt (Researcher at the Central University of Technology and a former Ph.D. student of the UFS Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology); Prof. Koos Albertyn from the above department, and Prof. James du Preez Senior Professor and Head of this department.

The article by Lodolo et al. was also listed as one of the three most cited articles of 2010 published in this journal.

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