Please select the eligibility criteria that correspond to the clinical trial below.
Title: MemoTV: Epigenetic, Neural and Cognitive Memories of Traumatic Stress and Violence in Former Offenders of the Townships of South Africa
Brief Summary: Escalating violence is omnipresent in South African townships and can be traced back to two core mechanisms: a trauma-related hyper-arousal and a positive rewarding perception of violence. In the past, there was no therapeutic intervention available addressing both, trauma and the so-called appetitive aggression. The University of Konstanz has developed a culturally sensitive and scientifically based short-term intervention for the treatment of traumatized patients, the Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), that has proven its effectiveness in various randomized clinical studies in different war-affected populations. Recently, the NET has been adapted for the forensic offender rehabilitation (FORNET) by also addressing the perpetration of violence related to a self-rewarding perception of the exposure with violence. It has shown to be effective in reducing the number of committed offenses in a perpetrator sample in Burundi and to reduce PTSD symptoms in a perpetrator sample in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic efficiency of FORNET in a randomized clinical control trial with a sample of former offenders of the townships of Cape Town. In addition to the previous studies, we specifically addressed the context of ongoing stress and linked our findings to epigenetic markers of stress and violence. Participants were followed over a period of up to 25-months post-treatment. The FORNET was also disseminated to local staff of our collaboration partners from the South African Universities and an organization working in the townships to warrant sustainability of the therapeutic intervention.


Options:
A: Inclusion Criteria:

* Age above 18;
* Suffering from a Common Mental Disorder (as defined by an a priori cut-off score on the 12 item General Health Questionnaire)
* Resident in the state (Goa) for the subsequent 12 months
* Not requiring urgent medical/surgical attention (e.g hospital admission)

Exclusion Criteria:

* Suffering from a cognitive or sensory impairment which makes participation in the evaluation difficult
* Not speaking Konkani, Marathi, Hindi or English
B: Inclusion Criteria:

* Adults aged 30 yrs+ diagnosed with hypertension and /or diabetes who are able to give written consent (or verbal witnessed consent for illiterate patients).

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Patient requiring immediate referral to tertiary care due to accelerated hypertension, diabetic complications.
2. Patients with learning difficulties or vision/ hearing impairments but without a care giver making it impossible to use mobile phone.
3. Pregnant and lactating women.
C: Inclusion Criteria:

* All the teachers in the participating schools.
* Teachers of Grade 1-10 will be approached.
* Both Genders.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Lack of informed consent.
* Teachers who are leaving/ not planning to be in the school in 3 months' time.
* Teachers who have not been involved in active teaching in last 6 months.
D: Inclusion Criteria:

* High levels of PTSD symptoms (i.e. Scores on the PSS-I \> 7 points)
* High levels of appetitive aggression (i.e. Scores on the Appetitive Aggression Scale (AAS) \> 8 points)
* participants are recruited through the community based re-integration program

Exclusion Criteria:

* acute psychotic episode

Answer: D