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In this study, we assessed the relevance and effectiveness of radio broadcasting as a strategy that facilitates the adoption and use of safer sexual practices among students at a South African university. Based on ethnographic data, the article highlights that the essential and critical contribution of campus radio lies in its ability to create a social space for HIV/AIDS communication. The overall aim of this study was to assess the relationship between exposure to radio broadcasting messages and the adoption of safer sexual practices. Our analysis suggests that campus broadcasting can be instrumental in promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasing attention is paid to impacts of HIV/AIDS on women's mental health, often framed by decontextualized psychiatric understandings of emotional distress and treatment. We contribute to the small qualitative literature extending these findings through exploring HIV/AIDS-affected women's own accounts of their distress—focusing on the impacts of social context, and women's efforts to cope outside of medical support services. Nineteen in-depth interviews were conducted with women experiencing depression or anxiety-like symptoms in a wider study of services in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Thematic analysis was framed by Summerfield's emphasis on contexts and resilience. Women highlighted family conflicts (particularly abandonment by men), community-level violence, poverty and HIV/AIDS as drivers of distress. Whilst HIV/AIDS placed significant burdens on women, poverty and relationship difficulties were more central in their accounts. Four coping mechanisms were identified. Women drew on indigenous local resources in their psychological re-framing of negative situations, and their mobilisation of emotional and financial support from inter-personal networks, churches and HIV support groups. Less commonly, they sought expert advice from traditional healers, medical services or social workers, but access to these was limited. Though all tried to supplement government grants with income generation efforts, only a minority regarded these as successful. Findings support ongoing efforts to bolster strained mental health services with support groups, which often offer valuable emotional and practical support. Without parallel poverty alleviation strategies, however, support groups may sometimes offer little more than encouraging passive acceptance of the inevitability of suffering—potentially exacerbating the hopelessness underpinning women's distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has the highest burden of HIV/AIDS in the world. Theories that account for this are wide-ranging. This article argues that anthropological theories advanced to speak to the widespread nature and particular patterning of HIV vulnerability revert to problematic notions that betray age-old prejudices that once characterised the discipline. I argue that these theories do not, in fact, go to the root cause debates that are more contemporary and thus credible in accounting for HIV/AIDS in South Africa. South Africa has some glaring properties that cannot be ignored when accounting for its HIV/AIDS epicentre status. This article is a critical appraisal of anthropological HIV/AIDS discourse in South Africa. I argue that, in fact, such discourse serves ubiquitous purposes that can be duly read when one considers the history of the discipline, practices in the discipline and the power dynamics that reside in and arise from scholarly interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]