Does stigma always have negative consequences?

Role of Psychological Makeup in Psychological Rehabilitation of Acid Attack Victims

From eve-teasing to more aggressive forms of sexual violence, subjection of women to sexual violence has been on the rise. One heinous form of sexual violence is the acid attack. Acid attack refers to the intentional act of throwing acid on an individual with the intent of harming, torturing, disfiguring, injuring, or killing them. Despite an increase in the number of reported cases of acid attacks, the initial nonavailability of strict legislatures and underreporting of the crime have led to gross underrepresentation of the acid attack victims in the scientific literature. Moreover, most researches focus on the impact of acid attack and not on the process of recovery for these victims. Hence, this paper attempts to explore the role of psychological makeup in the psychological rehabilitation of acid attack victims. This study adopted the homogeneous purposive sampling method. The sample consisted of 30 female victims of acid attack between the age group of 18 to 25 years. The narratives of these victims focusing on their experiences before and after the incidence were collected. Findings of this study indicate that psychological makeup is an important variable that is responsible for the successful recovery from trauma. Nearly all of the victims have shown symptoms of maladaptive psychological makeup after facing a violent event. However, after participation in the rehabilitation program, the victims moved from having maladaptive psychological makeup toward having adaptive psychological makeup. The emergent subthemes comprising maladaptive psychological makeup consists of cognitive distortions, hopelessness, shame, and suicidal ideation; and for adaptive psychological makeup, these are positive life orientation, belief in the just world, and self-efficacy. The insights of the study will contribute to an improved understanding of the recovery process of the acid attack victims and help in planning intervention protocols for them.