Lameze Abrahams is a Health Professions of South Africa registered clinical psychologist with more than 20 years’ experience in the field of clinical psychology and the provision of evidence-based practice in psychotherapy. She has spent the last 16 years in public mental health and the management of psychological services, with more than 10 years as the Principal Psychologist at the largest psychiatric hospital in the Western Cape. Her training, teaching, research and leadership acumen has been developed through positions at both clinical and academic departments. She has worked clinically in multiple services; including child and adolescent and adult psychiatry and with special populations. She has garnered expertise in business management and the implementation of strategic objectives, with a track record of building co-operative relationships.
Lameze has a passion for advancing community psychology and enhancing the lives of the those who are most in need. To this end, she has expanded the development of psychological services in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, focussing attention on recovery, co-occurring substance use disorders and evidence-based practice in psychology. She has held positions as Chair of the Division of Psychotherapy at the University of Cape Town (UCT), Chair of the South African chapter of the International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction and Deputy Chair of the Division of Psychologists in Public Service at PsySSA.
Lameze is a PhD candidate at the UCT Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health with a focus on the adapting a Mindfulness-Based Intervention for mental healthcare users presenting with co-occurring serious mental illness and substance use disorders.
She has multiple journal publications and has presented at both national and international conferences.
Abstract
The Development of Drug Demand Reduction Curricula in Training Institutes in South Africa
Despite the high prevalence of substance use disorders (SUDs) and substance related problems in South Africa, the country does not have adequately trained health professionals to address the burden of SUDs. This has an impact on the availability of access to the ever-growing need for SUD services. South Africa also does not currently have a category for professional registration as addiction specialist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. To address the need for addiction professionals, our vision for DDR (as part of the ICUDDR) in South Africa is building a network of universities and other training institutes across all nine provinces in the country, to implement DDR programs into the academic curricula. Hence, this paper will focus on the development and implementation of evidence-based DDR curricula in South African training institutes focusing on students who are enrolled in undergraduate and post graduate studies in Psychology (Bachelor of Psychology, Honours in Psychology, Clinical Masters in Psychology and Intern Clinical Psychologists).
By introducing the DDR curricula into training institutes the aim is to professionalise the addiction workforce by ensuring that students and addiction professionals are adequately trained according to the core competencies required for addiction professionals in South Africa.