Dealing with cause and effects of domestic violence

A child’s exposure to father’s abuse of mother is the strongest risk factor for transmitting domestic violence from one generation to the other. This cycle of domestic violence is hard to break because parents have communicated violence as the norm, which is understandable because any behaviour that the child sees from the elders become right in the eyes of a child. However, as the individuals grow, this could possibly be transformed brought by realizations feed by the environment, church and community upon witnessing the comparison between a family with harmonious relationship than a family in disarray.

Persons living with domestic violence at home have taught that violence and mistreatment are the method to vent anger. Someone resorts to physical violence because of dealing with their problems in the past with violence, exercising control and power successfully over others through violence, and no one has prevented him from being violent in the past.

Some direct causes that can start out a bout of domestic abuse are stress, aggravation by the intimate partner, financial difficulty, such as prolonged unemployment, depression, desperation, jealousy, anger

If one is compelled to alter her/his your behaviour because one is frightened of partner’s reaction is an indication of being abused.

Treatment/Dealing with domestic violence

Employ an open-ended question than asking for yes or no answers like, "How do you and your partner tend to disagree with each other?" than "Does your spouse hit you?" Indirect questions about things like how many emergency-room visits, injuries, or accidents they have had this year are more possible to be answered truthfully than direct questions concerning the cause of each injury. The same with painful/sensitive topic, questions about domestic violence are answered honestly more often when the person asked is alone with the professional than asked with their partner (the potential batterer), child, or other family member present during the assessment.

It is ministered by ascertaining and ensuring the victim’s well-being, giving suitable legal consequences to the batterer, dealing with the emotional effect to the victim and the problems of the abuser, specifically if one of the problems consists of alcohol or other substance abuse.

Deterrence of domestic violence entails endowing with financial opportunity, counsellors, significant others as role models, methodical community programs for youth and families, a school atmosphere that encourages preclusion of tastelessness in any relationship, and adult family members who are nourishing and giving reliable well-thought out foundation.

Several legal and mental-health professionals develop safety plans, both for home and in the workplace consisting of encouraging the victim to keep a charged personal cell phone at all times, preserving active peace, shielding, or restraining orders against the batterer, keeping a copy of the order constantly, next to distributing copies of the order to the victim's supervisor, workplace reception area, and security, as well as to schools and day-care providers for kids.

It is essential for battered men and women to recognize that abusers occasionally worsen in their abusiveness when first served with a defensive order and to take suitably heightened finely-tuned precautions. Likewise, the victim may also consider changing her/his work site, parking, or work schedule, obtaining an emergency contact person, and set up danger signals to alert neighbours or colleagues that the victim is in immediate threat.

Duluth Model also known as Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) which concentrates on women as the victims and men as the perpetrators of domestic violence is recognized as renowned approach of this  problem. This remedy empowers women by giving them information, resources, and support, which notably reduce the violence in victims' lives over time. This also sanctions legal resources as a measure to keep women safe and provide consequences to the culprits. 

With respect to particular treatment for batterers, conformity with various treatment sessions may reduce the possibility that domestic violence perpetrators do again this conduct.  However, inasmuch that only a few of perpetrators or respondents emerge, these results needs persistent research.

Legal sanction is also relevant. In the United States, federal law such as the Violence Against Women Act VAWA) while the Philippine women and children are protected by Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children (Anti-VAWC Act), and federal anti-stalking and anti-cyber-stalking legislation, provide significant prison terms and fines of up to more than $200,000 to suppress such a behaviour.

Further, there is the legal requirement in 47 states in the United States which requires health professionals to report suspected instances of domestic violence to the police. 

Effects of domestic violence/intimate partner violence

Domestic violence prognosis can be quite downbeat if it continues untreated; the emotional and physical consequences of persistent abuse can be stern and even end in murder. Therapy progresses prognosis.

In the United State where same sex is recognized, Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT) people are frequently confronted with rare challenges when trying to cope with domestic-abuse victimization. The hypothesis by family, friends, coworkers, and professionals that abuse is mutual in homosexual couples or is a normal part of what is professed as a dysfunctional relationship considering that it is not heterosexual, creates major impediments to battered GLBT in getting help. 

Other hurdles for GLBT battered men and women consists of fear of losing their jobs, home, and/or custody of their children should their sexual orientation recognized in the context of getting help for intimate partner abuse. That GLBT do not receive the legal and financial shelters their heterosexual counterparts do can restrain their ability to support themselves and live autonomously after leaving the abuser. 

Discrimination against GLBT people and other minorities is also a disincentive to receiving care. Another dreadful obstacles is consist of a lack of recognizing other admitted GLBT victims of domestic violence, and the smallness of the community, which can make it difficult for battered men and women in the GLBT community to live secretly from their abuser in the same town.  With these forgoing factors, God must be right in forbidding homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10) because it destroys the essence of family that He Himself conceptualizes when the Infant Jesus was raised not by both sexes but by opposite sexes, as a model.

Cycle of violence is susceptible in abusive relationship which includes stress-development, hot-blooded, and honeymoon stages.

The stress-development stage is identified as abusive relationship in which the abuser has the tendency to involve in lower-level abuse which includes pushing, rudeness and rising insistence for control. At the same time, the prey tends to attempt to pacify the abuser in an effort to shun from getting worse of the abuse.

Acts of abuse go up to a harsh level on the hot-blooded stage of intimate partner violence, manifesting as the most obvious and stern acts of abuse and control including slapping, punching, rape, or restraining the prey’s movement.

The honeymoon stage of the cycle of domestic violence has the tendency to instantly follow the obvious acts of violence of the hot-blooded stage and is typically typified by the abuser apparently to be quite regretful for the abuse, promising that it will never occur again and splash the victim with fondness.

The effects of domestic violence or abuse can be life-long. People who are abused by an intimate partner may develop sleeping problems, depression, anxiety attacks, low self-esteem, lack of trust in others, feelings of abandonment, anger, sensitivity to rejection, weakened mental and physical health, inability to work, poor relationships with their children and other loved ones, substance abuse as a way of coping.

Physical abuse may result in death, if the victim does not leave the relationship.

Children who grow up in domestic violence may develop serious emotional, behavioral, developmental, or academic problems, who may become violent themselves, or withdraw. Some act out at home or school while others try to be the perfect child. Children from violent homes may become depressed and with low self-esteem.

Based on researches, children and teens who grow up with domestic violence in the household are more likely to use violence at school/community in response to perceived threats, more likely to attempt suicide, more likely to use drugs, more likely to commit crimes especially sexual assault, more likely to use violence to enhance their reputation and self-esteem, more likely to become abusers in their own relationships later in life.

Prevention and stopping intimate partner abuse

Prevention can be acquired through different approaches: 

• Donate money/time to a domestic-violence organization. 
• Study the issue in an in-depth methodology. 
• Educating the children about healthy versus abusive relationships 
• Listen in a non-judgmental way to a domestic violence victim when she/he narrates experience, and providing victims information about where to get help. 
• Discourage sexist jokes and remarks. 
• Stay away from movies that pointlessly portray intimate partner violence and violence against women. 
• Write to legislators to support laws that protect and otherwise support intimate violence sufferers. 

Warning signs and symptoms of intimate partner abuse

Anyone who feels being humiliated, physically attacked, extremely dominated by her/his partner show sign of being a victim of intimate partnership.

Repeated absences from school/work, copious wounds the victim tries to explain, low self-esteem, a change in personality, fear of disputes, passive-aggressive behavior, blaming him/herself, isolation from others, or stress-related physical signs.

The list of questions provided below further explores whether more obvious acts of abuse have occurred, like hitting, kicking, punching, or throwing objects. The acronym An Abuse, Rape, Domestic Violence Aid and Resource Collection (AARDVARC) illustrates a number of warning signs for friends, family members, and coworkers for recognizing people who may be victims of intimate partner abuse.

The more of the following questions answered with Yes the more likely that an individual is into an abusive relationship. Examine answers and seek help if replies fall to a large number of the questions: 

• Are you scared of your partner a large percentage of the time? 
• Do you avoid particular topics or spend a lot of time figuring out how to talk about specific issues to prevent stimulation of partner’s negative reaction/anger? 
• Do you ever  sense that you cannot do anything right for your partner? 
• Do you ever feel so badly about yourself that you think you deserve to be physically harmed? 
• Have you vanished the love and respect that you once gained for your partner? 
• Do you occasionally doubt if you are the one who is crazy, that perhaps you are exaggerating to your partner’s behaviors? 
• Do you sometimes fantasize about ways to murder your partner to get them lost in your life? 
• Are you scared that your partner may try to murder you? 
• Are you scared that your partner will attempt to take your kids away from you? 
• Do you feel that there is nowhere to turn for assistance? 
• Are you feeling psychologically frozen? 
• Were you abused as a child, or did you grow up with domestic violence? Does domestic violence look as if normal to you?

Your partner’s lack of control over personal behavior:

• Does your partner have low self-esteem? Do they emerge to feel toothless, useless, or insufficient in the world, although they are apparently thriving? 
• Does your partner externalize the causes of their personal behavior? Do they point their violence on stress, alcohol, or a “bad day”? 
• Is your partner unpredictable? 
• Do you find your partner an amusing person between attacks of violence?

Your partner’s violent or threatening behavior: 

• Is your partner irritable? 
• Has your partner ever threatened to harm/ kill you? 
• Has your partner ever physically harm you? 
• Has your partner threatened to take your children away when you try to leave the relationship? 
• Has your partner ever threatened to commit suicide as a method of keeping you from leaving? 
• Has your partner ever coerced you to have sex when you didn’t want to? 
• Has your partner threatened you at work physically or on the phone? 
• Is your partner unkind to animals? 
• Does your partner breaks your possession or household things?

Your partner’s controlling behavior: 

• Does your partner attempt to keep you from seeing your friends/family? 
• Are you ashamed to invite friends/family over to your house because of partner’s behavior? 
• Has your partner restricted your access to money, the telephone, or the car? 
• Does your partner attempt to stop you from going where you want to go, or from doing what you desire to do? 
• Is your partner possessive, asking where you are going and where you have been, as if checking up on you? Does he accuse you of having an affair? 

Your partner’s diminishment of you: 

• Does your partner abuse you verbally? 
• Does your partner humiliate/criticize you in front of others? 
• Does your partner often ignore you/put down your opinions/contributions? 
• Does your partner always insist that he is right, even when he is evidently wrong? 
• Does your partner blame you for their own violent behavior, saying that your behavior  them to be violent? 
• Is your partner over and over again apparently angry with you? 
• Does your partner objectify and disrespect those of your gender? Does your partner see you as property/a sex object, rather than as a person? 

Witness the following bunch of warning signs in the workplace which are determinants of domestic abuse: 

• Bruises and other signs of impact on the skin, with the excuse of “accidents” 
• Depression, crying 
• Habitual and unexpected absences 
• Habitual tardiness 
• Frequent, harassing phone calls to the person while at work 
• Fear of the partner, references to the partner’s resentment 
• Shrunk productivity and focus 
• Isolation from friends/family 
• Inadequate means to live (money, credit cards, car) 

When recognizing signs of domestic abuse in a colleague, talk to Human Resources department, who should be able to help the victim without further involvement.

How does culture perpetuate domestic abuse?

Society contributes to domestic violence by not taking it earnestly enough and by treating it as expected, normal, or deserved. Society perpetuates domestic abuse in the following specific manners: 

• Police may not treat domestic abuse as a crime, but, rather, as a “domestic quarrel.” 
• Courts may not confer severe consequences, such as imprisonment or economic sanctions. 
• A community usually doesn’t ostracize domestic abusers 
• Clergy/counselors may have the attitude that the relationship needs to be enriched and that the relationship can work, given more time and effort. 
• People may have the attitude that the abuse is the victim’s fault, or that the abuse is a normal part of marriage/domestic partnerships. 
• Gender-role socialization and stereotypes forgive abusive behavior by men.

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References:

[1] Robert Pearl, M.D. ,Domestic Violence: The Secret Killer That Costs $8.3 Billion Annually, http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/

[2] Facts about Domestic Violence Around the World, http://www.overcomingviolence.org/en/resources/campaigns/women-against-violence/week-6-stories-from-around-the-/domestic-violence-facts.html

[3] Facts about Domestic Violence Around the World http://www.overcomingviolence.org/en/resources/campaigns/women-against-violence/week-6-stories-from-around-the-/domestic-violence-facts.html

[4] Tina de Benedictis, Ph.D., Jaelline Jaffe, Ph.D., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D., Domestic Violence and Abuse: Types, Signs, Symptoms, Causes, and Effects, http://www.aaets.org/article144.htm 

[5] Charlotte Alfred, These 20 Countries Have No Law Against Domestic Violence, Updated: 03/10/2014 8:59 am EDT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/08/countries-no-domestic-violence-law_n_4918784.html

[6] Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, MD, Domestic violence facts, http://www.medicinenet.com/domestic_violence/article.htm

[7] Ramesh Shivani, M.D., R. Jeffrey Goldsmith, M.D., and Robert M. Anthenelli, M.D., Alcoholism and Psychiatric Disorders, http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh26-2/90-98.htm