Books / Book Chapters

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Author: search.filters.author.Abeysinghe, NStart date: 2010

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Improving the understanding of safe-sex behaviours with the use of two models in Health Psychology
    (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Abeysinghe, N
    Health psychology, which is a branch of psychology, aims to understand human health (wellbeing, illnesses, and vulnerabilities) from a biopsychosocial perspective that takes the biological, psychological, and social aspects of life into consideration. This sub-discipline broadly emphases its role in health promotion and maintenance of health, prevention and treatment of illness, detection and focus on causes of illnesses, and overall improvement of the health care system. Health psychologists utilise a broad range of psychological theories and models developed within the sub-discipline for the above functions. This paper outlines how two theoretical models in Health Psychology, the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), and the Health Belief Model (HBM), contribute to the understanding of safe-sex behaviours. Unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are noticeable problems around the globe. Almost one million adolescent women aged 19 or under become pregnant each year in the USA alone (Ventura & Freedman, 2000), and the number of adolescents acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STI), including Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), approximates to 3.5 million (Chambers, & Rew, 2003). In the UK the number of new diagnoses for STIs has increased from 63% over the last ten years (Health Protection Agency, 2008). In relation to homosexual relationships, there is still a high incidence of unsafe sex, mainly in the form of unprotected anal intercourse, despite the long number of years of health promotion and education aimed at this population (Crossley, 2000).
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Where Ethics and Culture Collide: Ethical Dilemmas in Grief Work Following the Easter Sunday Attacks in Sri Lanka
    (Springer, Cham, 2021-05-23) Abeysinghe, N; Ekanayake, E. S
    The success of mental health care for individuals and affected communities is strongly connected to the service providers' adherence to ethical standards of the profession. These ethical standards aim to ensure the safety, well-being and the best possible quality of service to the service users. As trainees and novice counsellors, these aspects are discussed and learned in detail during counsellor training programmes and other courses in mental health care. Continued professional supervision is considered an essential element of providing mental health care within an ethical framework by almost all the counsellor and mental health-care professional bodies in the world. Yet, this is practiced by few practitioners in low- and middle-income countries due to the shortage of trained, accessible, experienced supervisors. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of continued supervision in a changing sociocultural context to help mental health practitioners to be alert and prompt to safeguard the clients and ensure the best possible care for them when cultural aspects and ethical standards of client care are in conflict as they some times are.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Drawing in or ruling out “Family?” The evolution of the family systems approach in Sri Lanka
    (Springer, Cham, 2019) Ekanayake, E. S; Abeysinghe, N
    This chapter traces the baby steps of family systems approaches (FSA) in Sri Lanka. It captures some of the early known discussions about FSA held between academics, development workers, practitioners and grassroots counsellors and shares with the reader their genuine questions, doubts, cautious enthusiasm and joyous discoveries. The chapter also provides insights into the sociocultural realities within which counselling services are offered, the nature of the mental health and psychosocial services (MHPSS) in Sri Lanka, the diverse players and the specific limitations and challenges that proponents of FSA would need to navigate. The reader is invited to experience two real-life events in which the authors have explored the adaptation and use of FSA together with their students, co-workers and trainees. The first is in a classroom where masters-level students of counselling experience FSA as a practical learning experience. The second shares explorations with field counsellors working directly with vulnerable family members of migrant workers. These two scenarios highlight the reasons for and the manner in which FSA has been chosen as a robust, flexible and powerful tool capable of addressing the demands of evolving family systems and a changing Sri Lankan society.