About
52
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Introduction
Sarah Abu-Kaf is a professor in Cross-Cultural Psychology at the Conflict Management and Resolution Program of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at BGU and completed her post-doctoral studies in the Department of Anthropology of Harvard University. She has received the Fulbright-Rabin Post-Doctoral Scholar, named to the Women in Science Hall of Fame by the US Department of State, and won the Israeli Council for Higher Education Award.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2021 - present
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- Chairman of the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies
July 2017 - present
Publications
Publications (52)
The current study investigated the Dependency and Self-critical personality vulnerabilities to depression among Bedouin and Jewish university students. Culture was expected to play a moderating role in the association between self-criticism and Depression. Ninety-six Bedouin students and ninety-six Jewish students completed the Depressive Experienc...
Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the number of Bedouin Arab students
studying at institutions of higher education in Southern Israel. To date, research on Bedouin
students is limited, particularly with regard to their coping and adjustment. The main aim of
the current study is to shed more light on potential pathways between...
This study aimed to examine coping resources (sense of coherence and hope) and stress reactions among Bedouin Arab adolescents in southern Israel during three periods of escalated political violence. Two main questions were examined: 1) Did adolescents report different coping resources and levels of stress reactions during these three different per...
Abstract
Elevated levels of depressive and somatic symptoms have been documented among college students. Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the number of Bedouin Arab students studying at institutions of higher education in southern Israel. To date, research on coping and mental-health problems among students who are members o...
Mental health problems are common among higher education students, yet formal help-seeking rates remain low. Mental health literacy (MHL) is crucial in facilitating help-seeking, but its relationship with formal help-seeking behaviors among ethnic minority students is poorly understood. This study explored MHL among Palestinian minority students in...
Trust in mental health professionals and services profoundly impacts health outcomes. However, understanding trust in mental health professionals, especially in ethnic minority contexts, is lacking. To explore this within the Bedouin-Arab minority, a qualitative study conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 Bedouins in southern Israel. Partici...
Background
Mental health literacy (MHL) has been related to health behaviors and outcomes. However, studies examining MHL as a barrier and facilitator to service use are limited, especially among minority groups.
Aims
This study examined MHL as a barrier and facilitator to mental health service use among the Palestinian Bedouin minority in Israel....
The study aimed to explore barriers to mental health service attainment among Bedouin women living in different residential environments in southern Israel. We hypothesized that emotional distress and the utilization of mental health services would be influenced by the living environment and ethnic identity factors. The sample included 376 Arab-Bed...
Background:
There is growing interest in Mental health literacy (MHL) worldwide, given its important role in overcoming barriers to service use and reducing mental health disparities. However, little is known about MHL among Arabs.
Aim:
We conducted a scoping review to examine MHL levels and correlates among Arabs in both Arab and non-Arab count...
Over the past two decades, increasing numbers of Bedouin Arab and ultra-Orthodox women have been integrated into the Israeli labor market. The integration of these women from traditional and minority communities into the general workforce
involves signifcant coping on the practical, social, and emotional levels. This study examined factors that ma...
Background. Mental health literacy (MHL) has been proposed as a factor in facilitating the utilization of mental health services. Tis study examined MHL among the Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel, based on Jorm's six-dimension framework, and the contribution of each MHL dimension to mental health service use. Methods. A cross-sectional study con...
Background
Many studies show that members of minority groups underutilize mental health services and report more barriers to such utilization than majority groups. However, very little is known about these barriers and their relation to mental health service use among the Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel.
Aims
This study examined barriers to me...
Background:
Many studies indicate that ethnic minority women, including women from the disadvantaged Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel, experience higher rates of psychological distress but are less likely to use mental health services. This study examined psychological distress and its role as a moderator in the relationship between mental heal...
This study explored the mental health and job satisfaction of Ultra-Orthodox women who
work in different cultural environments. Data were gathered from 304 Ultra-Orthodox women who belong to various streams in this society and who were recruited by the Midgam research panel. The participants filled out self-reported questionnaires that assessed the...
According to the attention restoration theory, exposure to nature (ETN) renews one's capacity to focus attention, which decreases cognitive fatigue and therefore may increase positive emotions. Indeed, natural settings have been associated with high prevalence of happy facial expressions (HFE). However, how universal the association is, remains unc...
In Israel, as in other developed countries, mental health problems are common among older adults who are members of disadvantaged ethnic minorities that are experiencing cultural and social changes. The main goals of the current study were: (a) to examine gender differences in the levels of psychological distress and social support among Bedouin el...
Over the past four decades, there have been significant changes in workplaces around the world, including a workforce that has become more diverse as the relative proportion of women in the workforce has increased. This trend has included the increased workforce participation of women from conservative minority groups. This article discusses the si...
עיון במחקרים שנערכו על החברה הערבית בישראל מעלה מחסור במחקר עדכני
ומקיף שיבחן את הבריאות הנפשית ואת הסוגים השונים של מצוקות נפשיות
השכיחות בחברה זו. חסרים גם מחקרים שיבחנו את גורמי הסיכון להתפתחות
או להתגברות של מצוקה נפשית ומחקרים שיאתרו את גורמי החוסן שיש בכוחם לסייע
לסובלים ולמתן את המצוקה.
מאמר זה מציג שתי תופעות בחברה הערבית שהקשר ביניהן ברור...
Many studies have examined the coping strategies and depression of mothers of children with disabilities, but most have involved Western families and only a few refer to unique and traditional cultures. The main goal of the current study was to assess depression among Bedouin Israeli mothers raising children with developmental disability (DD) and h...
Objectives
Psychological distress is a problem strongly associated with socio-economic conditions. This study aims to assess rates of psychological distress and ‘poor’ self-rated health among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who constitute 21% of the population and nearly 50% live in poverty, and compare their psychological distress scores with thos...
Background:
What factors affected the levels of anger and emotional distress experienced during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic? We hypothesized that (1) sociodemographic factors and resiliency factors would partially explain psychological distress and anger, with stronger resiliency associated with lower levels of distress and an...
Following the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, policymakers have been occupied with the questions of whether and how to specially address unique cultural groups coping with the pandemic. This study aimed to evaluate the potential for a culturally tailored approach to the transmission of health messages in a time of crisis among two minority populati...
Social connections have been found to promote wellbeing among older adults. Studies note gender differences in older adults' social network characteristics and aspects of social support. The present study examined gender differences in the association of social network characteristics (number of strong social ties) and perceived tangible support am...
The aim of this study was to explore the coping resources of hope and sense of coherence, which are rooted in positive-psychology theory, as potential resilience factors that might reduce the emotional distress experienced by adults from three cultural groups in Israel during the chronic-stress situation of a pandemic. The three cultural groups exa...
Background:
Against the backdrop of 10 years of civil war in Syria, with millions of refugees, this study aimed to explore sense of community coherence and the acculturation strategies of integration and competition as factors that might explain mental-health problems among adolescent Syrian refugees in Greece. Methods: Data were gathered from 173...
Objectives:
The COVID-19 epidemic is affecting the entire world and hence provides an opportunity examine how people from different countries engage in hopeful thinking. The aim of this study was to examine the potentially facilitating role of perceived social support vis-à-vis hope as well as the mediating role of loneliness between perceived soc...
Purpose
Mental health literacy (MHL) is the ability to understand health information originating from different sources. Little is known about ethnic differences in sources for health information, and the effect these differences has on elderly MHL. In this paper, we focus on the social networks (i.e. social connections) of elderly people from diff...
בשנים האחרונות הפכה האקדמיה בעולם ובישראל נגישה יותר לסטודנטים
וסטודנטיות מאוכלוסיות שבמהלך ההיסטוריה הודרו מהמרחב האקדמי. מגמה
זו הגבירה את הגיוון האתני והתרבותי בקמפוסים השונים, והדגישה כמה חשוב
שמוסדות אקדמיים ייצרו מרחב אקדמי מכיל המעודד מִגוון ורב-תרבותיות, מרחב
שבו אנשי הסגל מבינים את הרקעים התרבותיים של הסטודנטים והסטודנטיות
ועומדים הן על הה...
Background:
In Israeli colleges and universities, many Arab students experience acculturative stress. Such stress arises from the need to learn new cultural rules, manage the overarching conflict inherent in maintaining elements of their culture of origin (i.e., Arab culture) while incorporating elements of the host culture (i.e., Jewish academic...
Mental health literacy (MHL) provides a framework to overcome barriers to service use and reduce mental health disparities through public education. Acquiring basic knowledge about mental health problems can guide subsequent help-seeking behavior. Improving knowledge about how to search for mental health information is a critical first step in impr...
The present study aimed to explore the coping resources and mental health of women who have fled Syria to a neighboring European country. To that end, we examined the roles of sociodemographic factors, situational factors, and personal and community sense of coherence (SOC and ComSOC, respectively) in mental-health outcomes. One hundred and eleven...
Background: This study compared Bedouin mothers of adolescents with developmental disabilities (DD) and Bedouin mothers of typically developing adolescents using measures of social support, depression, and somatisation. It further examined whether social support and raising a child with DD would predict maternal depression and somatisation beyond d...
We compared sense of coherence (SOC) among Bedouin women in polygamous with those in monogamous marriages. SOC is a global orientation toward life as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful, and is derived from generalized resistance resources that promote effective coping in stressful life situations. Strong SOC may be a resource for strengthen...
Bedouin society has undergone rapid changes over the past decade. The younger generation of Bedouin women is better educated, which has enabled them to enter different professions, increased their incomes and elevated their social status. We examined the sense of coherence (SOC) and its components of meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibil...
This chapter addresses major determinants of mental-health issues among Palestinian Arab women in Israel, including political, social, cultural, and economic factors. Poverty, harsh living conditions, violence, disrupted family relations, polygamy, discrimination and stigma, employment and working conditions, among other factors, are discussed in t...
Abstract
Objective: This study examined three theoretical models of the relationship between depressive symptoms and somatic complaints among Bedouin Arab and Jewish college\university students in Israel. The functional model, suggests that somatic complaints may precede depressive symptoms; the affect-dysregulation model, suggests that depressive...
Background:
During stressful events, individuals (particularly adolescents) from minority groups are often more vulnerable to distress. This claim will be examined in terms of coping resources and stress reactions to escalated political violence. This study aimed to compare coping resources and stress reactions among adolescents from two ethnic gr...
Purpose
Medical clowning has proven effective for reducing pain, anxiety, and stress, however, its differential effects on children from different cultures have not yet been researched. This study evaluated the effects of medical-clowning intervention on anxiety and pain among Jewish and Bedouin children, and anxiety among their parents, in souther...
The present study was conducted during “Protective Edge,” a long-lasting military operation between the State of Israel and Hamas in Gaza, during which hundreds of rockets were fired from Gaza into various regions across the country. At the same time, Israeli forces bombed Gaza and sent in ground forces. The military operation ended after 50 days o...
Introduction:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationships between two coping factors which facilitate adoptive adjustment when facing stressful situations. We have examined links between sense of coherence (SOC) and the concept of hope as well as its wish and expectation components and its collective and individual dimensions. We have...
Abstract
Background: The current study is the first to examine serious suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and psychological distress among students belonging to different religious-ethnic groups attending VET high schools.
Method: 3,553 students studying in the VET high schools completed a self-report survey. The survey evaluated serious suicida...
The longitudinal associations between depression and somatization among two ethnic groups. this research work was presented in the World Psychological Forum-2015.
Background:
The current study is the first to examine serious suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and psychological distress among students belonging to different religious-ethnic groups attending VET high schools.
Method:
3,553 students studying in the VET high schools completed a self-report survey. The survey evaluated serious suicidal ideati...
The present study examined attitudes toward war and peace during a violent conflict
and their relationships with anxiety reactions. We aimed to find out if attitudes toward
the conflict in general or attitudes toward the specific operation are linked to anxiety
reactions during a stressful situation and if a personal coping resource mediates the
re...
This study examined cultural differences in self critical and dependent vulnerabilities to depression and sense of coherence as predictors of depression among Bedouin Arab and Jewish university students in Israel. In addition, this study explored the role of sense of coherence on the self-criticism-depression association and the dependency-depressi...
