Most people would agree that physical and psychological violence are not healthy and can really harm victims of these forms of abuse long-term. A new study supports the idea that psychological violence can lead to mental problems like depression.
A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol in England and at a university in Brazil found that “psychological violence during pregnancy by an intimate partner is strongly associated with postnatal depression, independently of physical or sexual violence.”
Ana Bernarda Ludermir, an author of the study, said in a press release that there is more of a focus on physical and sexual violence, so psychological violence can be overlooked in cases of intimate partner violence.
This is obvious even when looking at statistics. Most statistics focus on victims of physical abuse and rarely on emotional abuse. However, the Centers for Disease Control did have older statistics from 2001 stating that “1 in 5 adolescents reports being a victim of emotional abuse.”
According to the CDC, “each year, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes.”
Emotional and verbal abuse, also known as psychological abuse, is defined as “attempts to isolate, threaten, or intimidate,” and some examples are yelling, criticizing and name-calling, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website.
Mary Volkar, a therapy supervisor for the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime, said a way to help possible victims decide if they have been psychologically abused is to determine if the same treatment toward a best friend would be acceptable. If not, that is a red flag.
“When you put it in a different context … then she gets it,” Volkar said. “You have to take it out of … her own frame of reference and put it into another frame of reference for her to kind of get enough insight to understand … ‘You know what, that’s not okay.’”
She said that people who have been victims of trauma for so long don’t see themselves in that way.
“People who have been victimized their entire life, traumatized their entire life, don’t see it,” Volkar said. “They build such a shell.”
She said that victims in these harmful relationships generally had a bad relationship model when they were younger.
“Women who tend to get into violent relationships usually witness violent relationships in their childhood,” Volkar said. “It doesn’t make sense for a woman to be in a violent relationship and stay [there] unless it’s kind of like the language that they were taught growing up.”
She said women can learn instilled helplessness that causes them to think, “I can never escape,” “Nothing can ever be different,” and “This is the best I could ever hope for.”
“It becomes that learned helplessness that actually lessens her ability to see what her choices are,” Volkar said. “She doesn’t even recognize that she’s traumatized. She says ‘Well, this is the way it always is. Why would I expect anything different?”
She said those are thoughts caused by trauma and are not logical and rational.
“We’ve got our trauma thinking, which when we’re triggered back into old traumas by something in the present, we act in ways that are trying to … fight and flight or freeze,” Volkar said.
She said that a major side effect of abuse can be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is sometimes misdiagnosed as depression and anxiety. The National Institute of Mental Health defines PTSD as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.”
“It’s a mode of…viewing the world and operating in the world of ‘Sooner or later I’m going to get hurt again,’” Volkar said.
She gave the example of a woman who has been physically and emotionally abused by a boyfriend who then shuts down at work when an employer criticizes her work performance, since she is reminded of that initial abuse.
The way to avoid these long-term side effects is education, she said. This includes discussing the natural processes of trauma, like the biological and psychological reactions. Physical reactions include a racing heart and stomachache.
“When they have a handle on their physical trauma reactions, they also have a handle then on their psychological reactions,” Volkar said. “The other component to that is…how do you get yourself safe even though you’ve been triggered into believing that you’re not safe.”
She said victims also need to tell their stories “over and over and over again until that story becomes neutralized or more neutral.”
There are longer recovery processes for people who have experienced consistent trauma and those who only experienced trauma a few times.
For more information, read the resources below or talk to a mental health professional.
Sources:
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/types-of-sexual-assault/dating-and-domestic-violence
http://www.ncadv.org/resources/FactSheets.php
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/intimatepartnerviolence/index.html
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2010/7199.html
http://www.womenshealth.gov/violence/types/emotional.cfm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/datingviolence.htm
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml