- Title
- Spousal experiences of living with a gambling disordered partner and intimate partner violence in South Africa: a grounded theory study
- Creator
- Oppelt, Thelma
- Subject
- Gambling and crime -- South Africa
- Subject
- Gambling Disordered
- Date Issued
- 20223-12
- Date
- 20223-12
- Type
- Doctoral's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/62980
- Identifier
- vital:73079
- Description
- I have been motivated to conduct this research on a professional and personal level. As an only child, I grew up with individuals who gambled every day of their lives, and the spouses/partners who struggled with being labelled by society as weak to stay with them. Furthermore, I have personal insights into the Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) stories of the women, having been tagged along with my mother who worked at a women’s support centre in our community. I can appreciate the help that these women provide to each other and the perspectives they lend to this study. The insights I bring from my personal experiences have assisted me in making a personal connection with this research area. I became the first in my family to attend university, even though my father was a cleaner and never completed high school. I performed well as an undergraduate and completed my first degree, with Psychology as a major. My master’s degree challenged me to look at spouses’ experiences of the psychological and financial trauma of living with a male gambling disordered partner, and out of it the doctoral thesis of Intimate Partner Violence as a specific form of violence in a gambling disordered relationship was formed. I worked as a researcher for five years at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). At the HSRC I had come to realise that I had to find a solution for my difficulty in working on projects far removed from Psychology or human interactions. I was always the first person to be nominated to do qualitative interviews and analyse the data, but all in fields far removed from my chosen field of study. However, I do appreciate that if I had not done all those projects, I would not have been ready to embark on my PhD journey. Upon leaving the HSRC, I started as the Senior Programmes and Safe House Manager at a not-for-profit organisation. I do not think that I would have been able to do justice to the stories that many of the individuals have described in this research study, without xvii working for an organisation that advocates for the safety of individuals who find themselves in such circumstances. On a personal level, even though I have never gambled in my life, I believe that gambling is a personal choice. I have volunteered at sober living homes and have seen some of the problems that spouses and their families experience. Because of my own experiences, I decided that the topic for my PhD thesis could explore the way Intimate Partner Violence is socially constructed and the implications of being the spouse of someone who is challenged by a gambling disorder.
- Description
- Thesis (PHD) -- Faculty of Health Science, 2023
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (xvii, 174 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Health Science
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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NMU School of Clinical Care Sciences
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Oppelt, T.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |