Browsing by Subject "Mediation"

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) account for millions of deaths and disabilities each year with many theories on the interaction between the two disorders. Tanzania has a high rate of harmful alcohol use, depression, and alcohol-related injuries. To address the growing burden, a nurse-led Brief Negotiational Intervention (BNI) was implemented in the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre Emergency Department in 2020. Three-month outcomes from this study have shown that AUDIT scores are not significantly reduced by the intervention. Thus, this study aims to explore the relationship and potential mediating effects of depression within the context of the BNI at KCMC ED. For quantitative aims, we used secondary data from the PRACT 6-month outcomes. We compared demographic characteristics between AUDIT/PHQ-9 categories using median, IQR, Kruskal-Wallis, and Fisher’s Exact Test. We then specified two cross-sectional structural equation models at 3 and 6 months to explore depression as a mediator between BNI and AUDIT scores. For our qualitative aim, we conducted 15 semi-structured interviews and analyzed data using a thematic coding approach. Out of our 282 participants, demographic characteristics differed between AUDIT/PHQ-9 groups on gender and education. Additionally, depression does not mediate the relationship between BNI and AUDIT scores at 3 or 6 months. However, BNI is reducing AUDIT and PHQ-9 scores at 6 months. Our qualitative data highlights the association between AUD and MDD and explores the importance of social communities for both disorders. More research is needed to determine the temporality between AUD and MDD in this context. Yet, this study has provided evidence that an alcohol-based BNI has provided benefits for AUD and MDD. Thus, it’s imperative to capitalize on this unintended intervention effect and modify the intervention to include a mental health component.

This multi-sited (or “patchwork”) ethnography (A.L. Tsing 2011, xi; Günel, Varma, and Watanabe 2020; Marcus 1995; A.L. Tsing 2015) examines how Mande music is remade in its circulation through world music industry networks of the Black Atlantic. I study how world music record producers work to reconcile ethical, aesthetic, and financial motivations in sound. Turning to Toumani Diabaté’s Kaira (1988), an influential world music album produced by ethnomusicologist Lucy Durán, I argue that this recording has been uniquely consequential in defining the sound of Mande music for Global North publics, and then I treat it as a case study to consider the ethics of cross-cultural record production. I show how Durán engages with a politics of invisibility to prioritize the careers of her collaborators, to cultivate ethnographic authority in her recording practice, and to create avenues for broad public appreciation of Mande music traditions, even as she effects alterations on the musical practices she proposes to reflect. Next, I illustrate how one Mande musician’s expressive practice is transformed by his migration to the Southern United States and by his interactions with the music industry in that context. Finally, I present a sonic exposition of twenty-six Mande music recordings that I myself produced as yet another frame in which to consider how Mande music is remade in circulation.

Religious observance has been reliably shown to improve a wide variety of health outcomes across the lifespan. Significant work has already been done to find mediating processes that explain this relationship, but as yet no studies have been published that attempt to integrate these mediators into a single model to see if they all work together. The current study presents three possible mediators of the religiosity-health link: social support, self-control, and reliance on others. Participants were recruited from Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk worker system (N = 112) for a 14-day diary study in which all relevant constructs were measured on a daily basis, with daily health behaviors being the outcome. Social support, self-control, and reliance on others were all found to be simultaneous partial mediators of the religiosity-health link, though some questions remain as to the causal flow between religiosity and each of these mediators. It is concluded that each of these mechanisms is related to religiosity and in turn aid in the pursuit of superior health.