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Amina Saban

 

Recipient: Amina Saban

Hometown: Cape Town, South Africa

University: University of Cape Town

Award: African Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship

PhD thesis topic: The Association between Psychopathology and Substance Abuse in Young People

Research Location: Cape Town

 

 

When Amina Saban arrives at drug treatment centres in Cape Town, South Africa, the response from patients she interviews is typically warm. “Many actually ask me to come back so they can talk to me another time,” she says. “They feel an obvious need to sit with someone new who’s going to address problems that possibly have never been dealt with.”

 

Saban’s groundbreaking study examines the coexistence of substance abuse and psychiatric disorders in South African youth. Her efforts often receive an equally positive response from treatment centre directors who believe the research is long overdue.

 

Indeed, Saban’s doctoral thesis — supported by an African Population and Health Research Center fellowship with funding from IDRC — aims to provide a critical missing link in South Africa’s approach to drug dependency and mental health. According to a recent South African Stress and Health study, 9.8% of South Africans suffer from a mood disorder and 2.3% from post-traumatic stress disorder, while 11.4% abuse alcohol and 3.9% abuse drugs.

 

 

International research (90% of which has been produced in North America) indicates that many people suffer from both mental health and substance abuse problems. But a paucity of South African research on this coexistence means that the country often deals with the two closely intertwined phenomena in isolation. That undermines the effectiveness of treatment.

 

Substance abusers whose primary problem is seen to be behavioural, explains Saban, will be sent to a psychiatric facility where their substance use will get inadequate attention. Conversely, a person with undiagnosed psychiatric issues sent to a drug treatment centre “will get discharged with the underlying condition not being addressed. If it plays a large role in the substance abuse, the problem is invariably going to recur.”

 

 

Saban brings strong expertise in research methods to this work. A background in biological science led her to study research psychology and specialize in designing and implementing research projects. These skills were put to good use in the 1980s when she joined a multidisciplinary team attached to the psychiatric research unit of Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

 

Together with psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric nurses, and an anthropologist, she worked on a large community mental health study. While she learned a great deal through contact with team members and other experts at this Cape Town University teaching hospital, Saban also strengthened her colleagues’ capacity to conduct research. She was able to apply her research methods to areas as wide-ranging as orthopedics and hematology. “It wasn’t necessary to understand all the details of the clinical side of things,” she recalls, “as long as the research methods remained valid.”

 

Ultimately, one aspect of the community psychiatric study — substance abuse — captivated Saban’s interest. She became an associate research psychologist at the South African Medical Research Council’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit, then chose to focus on substance abuse for her doctoral thesis in psychiatry.

 

Her research includes surveys of the general population, of high-school students with no previous diagnosis of psychiatric illness or substance abuse, and of people being treated for drug use. So far, the work has confirmed some international research results in the South African context, such as the significant links between substance abuse and mental disorders.

 

 

Saban has also uncovered new questions. For example, people being treated for drug use appear to have a very different profile than substance abusers not in treatment. This raises the question of what obstacles keep some people (for instance, women) from seeking treatment. Also, the fact that the black South African community seem less likely than other groups to abuse substances suggests the possibility that “protective factors” are at work in that community.

 

“There are many new issues that we need to look at,” says Saban. “They could keep me busy for the rest of my days.”

 

Document(s) 2 of 9