[version 1; peer review: 2 approved with reservations]
No competing interests were disclosed.
The psychosocial experiences of widows during the death cleansing rituals have significant implications for their mental health and well-being. These rituals include medicinal body baths, isolation, deprivation of specific foods or behaviour, wearing dark clothing and shaving hair, among others. Cleansing rituals are an important cultural practice that is believed to purify the widow and help her cope with her loss. However, the rituals may also create psychological stress for widows who may feel stigmatised in their communities. To shed light on this topic, the present scoping review aims to identify and map the literature on the psychosocial experiences of widows during the cleansing ritual in Southern African countries. This review will follow the PRISMA guidelines and involve a comprehensive search of relevant databases, such as PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and PsycINFO, for peer-reviewed articles that focus on the experiences of widows in Africa during death cleansing rituals. The review’s findings are expected to have significant implications for policy and practice. Governments and support organisations should prioritise the development of culturally sensitive support services, including counselling and economic empowerment programs, to aid widows in Southern Africa. Furthermore, policies should be implemented to protect the rights of widows and prevent gender-based violence and discrimination.
The death of a spouse is one of the most challenging life stressors, bringing emotional, social, religious, and financial consequences, especially when children are involved. In African societies, widows are expected to undergo mandatory cleansing rituals set out to reinstate spiritual balance and social order after the death of their husbands.
The intersection between widowhood, cultural rituals, and psychosocial well-being has not been extensively studied in the Southern African context. Although several studies, such as,
Due to the complexity of this topic, which involves the intersection of spirituality, gender, and socio-cultural identity, a scoping review is ideal for charting existing evidence, highlighting gaps in knowledge, and synthesising findings from various disciplines. This scoping review protocol, therefore, details a systematic approach to reviewing the literature on the psychosocial experiences of widows during cleansing rituals in Southern African countries. The review aims to provide a summary of existing empirical research, highlight the contextual factors that shape widows’ experiences, and inform future psychosocial support strategies and policy frameworks that uphold dignity, human rights, and cultural values sensitivity.
The primary aim of this scoping review is to identify and summarise the available literature on the psychosocial experiences of widows during the death cleansing rituals in the Southern African countries, to provide a comprehensive overview of the findings, which can inform future interventions and policy initiatives to support widows in the region.
To attain the main objective, this scoping review seeks to accomplish the following aims: To identify the existing literature on the psychosocial experiences of widows during the cleansing ritual in Southern African countries. To synthesise the findings of existing research to identify common themes and patterns in the psychosocial experiences of widows. To assess the quality and rigour of existing research on this topic and identify gaps in the literature. To provide recommendations for future research and interventions to support widows during the cleansing ritual.
The review undertakes to explore the literature on the lived experiences of African widows, guided by the PCC framework.
The most prominent question for this review is:
This question endeavours to capture the complexity of the psychosocial experiences of widows during this ritual, while also acknowledging the potential influence of contextual factors, such as age, socioeconomic status, and culture, on these experiences. This question was formulated based on the PCC component (Population Concept and Context), which is one of the recommended scoping review frameworks (
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Population | Southern African widows who have gone through Traditional death cleansing rituals. |
| Concept | Comprehensive overview of the death cleansing rituals, future interventions, and policy initiatives to support widows in the Southern African region. |
| Context | Southern African countries, including those with a high proportion of young and elderly widows. |
What do widows report as the most common psychosocial experiences during the death cleansing rituals, and how do these experiences vary based on factors such as age, socioeconomic status, and cultural background? What role do cultural beliefs and practices play in shaping the psychosocial experiences of widows during the cleansing ritual? How do social support networks and community structures affect the psychosocial experiences of widows during the cleansing ritual? What interventions and policy initiatives could be developed to support the psychosocial well-being of widows during the cleansing ritual and beyond?
The study is designed as a scoping review, following the PRISMA-ScR method.
A thorough search will be done through various multidisciplinary databases. The grey literature, including dissertations, government reports, and publications from non-governmental organisations, will also be searched. The search will involve a combination of the search terms with Boolean operators (“AND” and “OR”).
A systematic search of electronic databases will include:
EBSCOhost Pubmed Scopus Sabinet JSTOR Google Scholar
Studies focused on widows’ experiences during or after death cleansing rituals Studies exploring psychosocial, emotional, or cultural aspects of widowhood Peer-reviewed journal articles or grey literature English publications Publications from 2015 to 2025
Studies conducted outside Southern Africa Non-English publications Publications prior to 2015
Every citation that is identified will be downloaded into EndNote. Duplicates will be removed, and titles and abstracts will be examined independently by two reviewers. Eligible studies will be reviewed in full-text format, and incongruities will be resolved by consensus and/or a third reviewer.
A data extraction framework will be developed to capture:
Author(s), year, country Study aims, design, and methodology Population characteristics Type and description of death cleansing ritual Key psychosocial themes Findings and recommendations Identified gaps
The review is anticipated to span three months.
| Activity | Timeline |
|---|---|
| 1. Protocol development | 1 month |
| 2. Database search and selection | 1 month |
| 3. Data extraction and analysis | 1 month |
| 4. Writing and finalisation of manuscript | 1 month |
The review expects to disclose substantial psychosocial burdens experienced by widows at cleansing rituals, which include trauma, depression, social isolation, and identity loss. Sufficient identification of resilience mechanisms will also be expected, particularly those that emerge from cultural beliefs, communities of support, and spiritual coping. Additionally, the review findings will explore research gaps in the context of gender sensitive policy development and culturally responsive counselling practices.
The review will utilise secondary data from published literature and does not require ethics clearance. Proper citation and acknowledgement of sources will be paramount. The protocol will be registered with the Open Science Framework (OSF) to promote transparency and accountability.
The scoping review will provide a critical understanding of the psychosocial experiences of widows engaging with death cleansing rites in Southern Africa. The review findings will serve as a basis to inform concerted actions through advocacy, academic discourse, and interventions that are culturally appropriate to promote the rights and dignity of widows after death cleansing. This review contributes to the decolonisation of psychosocial research and support, and for progressing processes towards an inclusive social justice in African contexts.
No supplementary materials are included at this stage of the protocol.
For a CC0 license:
Data are available under the terms of the
Or for CC-BY:
Data are available under the terms of the
Mphephu, P., & Muthivhi, M. (2025, December 18). Psychosocial experiences of Widows during the cleansing ritual: A scoping review Protocol of Southern Africa.
The project contains the following extended data:
1. PRISMA-ScR Protocol Checklist
The manuscript is positioned as an important contribution in the field of widowhood studies. In the absence of the full manuscript made available to the reviewer, my comments are more presumptive rather than conclusive. The social variable of economic status of these widows within the income pyramid is a crucial indicator; resource allocation and resource mobilization could be inextricable in understanding the performativity and avoidance of death cleansing rituals. A more detailed and dialectical explanation of the death cleansing rituals and its moorings would be useful. Cultural norms and customary laws have historically been weaponized to treat men and women differently whereas the woman is perceived as an inferior being. Whether widowhood cleansing rituals extend to the widowers would act as counterpoints, discordance and unwarping gendered micro-politics. Representations of widows through anecdotes, folklores and aphorisms in the public discourse and vernacular literature could strengthen the background information given the study is culturally anchored. Finally, the social variables of widowhood with a surviving child, nature of support from natal and marital kins, abandonment and ostracization, intergenerational ties and social network theory, and post-widowhood intimacy and community response towards it will go a long way in making this paper taut, nuanced and not an apologist of discursive violence legitimized through canons.
Ramphele, M. (1996). Political widowhood in South Africa: The embodiment of ambiguity. Daedalus, 125(1), 99-117.
Are the rationale for, and objectives of, the Systematic Review clearly stated?
Yes
Is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?
I cannot comment. A qualified statistician is required.
If this is a Living Systematic Review, is the ‘living’ method appropriate and is the search schedule clearly defined and justified? (‘Living Systematic Review’ or a variation of this term should be included in the title.)
Not applicable
Are sufficient details of the methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?
Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results presented in the review?
Yes
Reviewer Expertise:
Ageing, medical anthropology, death and bereavement, gender, and work & employment
I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.
Firstly, thank you for the opportunity to review this very interesting protocol for a prospective literature review on psychosocial experiences of widows during the death cleansing rituals in Southern Africa. Overall I found the topic very interesting and I think the methods are highly compelling.
I have some additional suggestions for the authors in terms of improving the robustness of their research, hopefully with a view to eventual publication in a top outlet. However, my overall assessment is positive and I look forward to seeing this work come to fruition.
1) Why limit the studies to 2015-2025? Given the limited literature available on this topic I think it would be better for the authors to cast a potentially wider net. In my mind 1990 onwards would make more sense. But if there are important reasons the authors consider 2015 to be a pivotal year then they should make that clear.
2) Which countries do you count as being in Southern Africa? I ask this question in all sincerity (as someone who is more of a widowhood expert than a regional expert). I think it would help if the authors could explicitly list the countries they want to focus on, possibly with some additional justification as to why those countries constitute a coherent cultural grouping.
3) Could the authors say something about methods in their criteria? I imagine that much of the literature that the authors will ultimately cite is going to be qualitative. I think it would be very helpful to explicitly layout what kinds of methods are therefore acceptable for your review. For example, is ethnography an acceptable method or only interviews? I think addressing these kinds of questions and providing justification will strengthen the work to come.
4) I would not insist upon it, but I think having a preregistered search string would make a lot of sense here. Many journals ask for them upon submission and I can see no reason not to write it down here.
5) I would also recommend to the authors that they integrate at least one round of hand search following a forwards/backwards search strategy. My experience with systematic reviews and meta-studies is that a lot of literature gets lots in string searches and doing at least some hand searching can greatly improve your coverage of the literature.
6) The authors state that they are going to assess the quality of existing evidence, but they do not (as far as I can see) clarify how they are going to do this. I would strongly encourage the authors to integrate a systematic quality assessment check into their protocol. As I suspect that the authors are going to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative literature I would strongly recommend QATSDD (see Sirriyeh et al 2011 for a full explanation of this tool and Carbuccia et al 2025 for an applied example).
Overall I think this is a fascinating project, one which I hope that this report will help to strengthen.
Carbuccia, L., Thouzeau, V., Barone, C.
Sirriyeh, R., Lawton, R., Gardner, P. and Armitage, G. (2012), Reviewing studies with diverse designs: the development and evaluation of a new tool. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 18: 746-752.
Are the rationale for, and objectives of, the Systematic Review clearly stated?
Yes
Is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?
Yes
If this is a Living Systematic Review, is the ‘living’ method appropriate and is the search schedule clearly defined and justified? (‘Living Systematic Review’ or a variation of this term should be included in the title.)
No
Are sufficient details of the methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?
Partly
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results presented in the review?
Partly
Reviewer Expertise:
Widowhood; life course sociology, health and wellbeing
I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.