The Effects of Domestic abuse on a person’s mental health

According to the Article by Edward C. Chang and Emma R Kahle, “Domestic abuse id defined as physical, emotional and/ or sexual harm of individuals who are intimately involved.  Domestic abuse represents a global problem” In this study they say a women aged 15 to 44 who are involved in a  domestic abuse relationship can lose between “5% to 20%” of her healthy years.  In this blog I am going discuss some of the repercussions or effects on a women’s mental and emotional health when domestic abuse is part of her life.(Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

Diagnosis of a person who is in a Domestic Abuse Relationship

·         Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

·         Anxiety (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

·         Increased suicidal behavior (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

·         Depression (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

·         Dissociative Disorder (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

·         Dissociative identity Disorder (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

·         Dissociative Trance Disorder (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

·         Dissociative Amnesia disorder (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

·         Depersonalization Disorder (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

In the Article titled Understanding How Domestic Abuse is associated with Greater Depressive Symptoms (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015) they took 71 adult females from a community based primary care clinic in the United States and had them assessed by answering questions of self-disclosure Hurt, Insulted, Threatened with harm and Screamed at them (HITS) scale for domestic abuse.  They also took the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale to measure for depressive symptoms.  (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

It was found that there is a correlation between Domestic Abuse, Belongingness and Depressive symptoms.  They also found that those females who had greater experiences of domestic abuse were associated with a greater risk of depression but also found that those women who had a connection with a higher power were found to have experienced fewer depressive symptoms.  (Chang, Kahle, & Hirsch, 2015)

In the article Dissociative Disorders and Possession experiences in Israeli, they used the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES) and the Dissociative Disorder Interview Schedule (DDIS) to find participants willing and meeting criteria for this study.  They found that many of the women who experienced domestic violence had reported being possessed at some point in their lives by alien entities, which is believed to be associated with dissociative trance disorder.  The average DES score among Arab women who had reported domestic violence exceeded the commonly accepted cut-off score of 30.  According to the article this means that the participants were positive for Dissociative disorders with dissociative amnesia and depersonalization disorder being the most common diagnosis. (Somer, Ross, Kirshberg, Shawahdy Bakri, & Ismail, 2015)

In the book The Body Keeps the Score, on page 100 it states that “traumatized people are not so fortunate and feel separated from their bodies.”  It goes on to say “To the depersonalized individual the world appears strange, peculiar, foreign, and dream-like.”   On page 157 it states  that when a person is ‘suddenly and unexpectedly devastated by an atrocious event”  that person is never the same again, the trauma gets replayed over and over again in the persons head and it causes the nervous system to be reorganized. 

In the following video, it showed how the different areas of the brain help in the recalling and the fight, flight, and freeze body movements. 

 

To really understand the effects of trauma I had to look at it in a different way.  I went to a retreat called Healing Warriors Hearts and this is the way that the person leading the retreat explained it to me.  Before anyone is ever traumatized they are building a road that is fun, enjoyable and relaxing the road gets stronger over time, but then the trauma happens and you end up on a detour road.  Now you are building a road that you keep repaving (reliving the trauma, flashbacks etc.) It takes a while to get somewhere where you are comfortable again and you may be able to get off the detoured road but you may never me on that first road.  Most people are able to get off the detoured road and find a happy medium road between the two roads.    

 

 

 

 

References

Chang, E. C., Kahle, E. R., & Hirsch, J. K. (2015). Understanding How Donestic Abuse is Associated with Great Depressive Symptoms in a Communty Sample of Female Primary Care Patients: Does Loss of Belongingness Matter. Violence Against Women, 1-12.

Somer, E., Ross, C., Kirshberg, R., Shawahdy Bakri, R., & Ismail, S. (2015). Dissociative disorders and possession experiences in Israel: A comparison of opiate use disoder patients, Arab women subjected to Domestic Violence and a nonclinical group. Transcultural Psychiatry, 52(1), 58-73.