The mental health focus in rape crisis services: tensions and recommendations

Women's Experiences Accessing Mental Health Care in Australia After Sexual Violence in Adulthood

In Australia, at least one in every five women has experienced sexual violence since age 15. Research consistently links sexual violence with poor mental health, persisting long after the crisis period. Trauma-informed mental health support is therefore critical. This article draws on interviews with 29 women who had experienced sexual violence to understand their experiences accessing mental health services in Australia. Our findings suggest that, constrained by a biomedical model of care, mental health practitioners' understanding of trauma generally, and sexual violence particularly, may be lacking. Further, women struggle to navigate a "maze" of services.

A Crisis of Care: The Politics and Therapeutics of a Rape Crisis Hotline

This article explores the politics and contingencies of care provided to survivors of sexual assault on a rape crisis hotline in the U.S.'s mid-Atlantic region. The support provided to survivors on the hotline represents a crisis of care, one fomented by the victim services sector's failure to address the limitations of a crisis-oriented paradigm or survivors' chronic trauma. The tension between the survivor-centered model of the hotline and the mental health needs of clients represents a friction of utility-a misalignment between the care hotline advocates provide and the support survivors seek. The anonymous care and internal contradictions of the hotline also results in high rates of vicarious trauma for advocates. Given the polysemic dimensions of care exhibited on the hotline, the service represents a form of negative care, one that accounts for gaps in survivors' care yet still fails to empower proactive means of recovery.

"I Don't Like Being That Hyperaware of My Body": Women Survivors of Sexual Violence and Their Experience of Exercise

The experience of exercise among women survivors of sexual violence is a multifaceted phenomenon. In effort to inform treatment interventions, we used a phenomenological approach to describe the lived experience of exercise among women survivors of sexual violence. Data analysis from a focus group discussion and individual interviews with eight women survivors receiving services at a rape crisis center (RCC) revealed four themes: exercising (and not exercising) fosters safety, exercising is risky, past trauma restricts exercise choices, and exercising is beneficial. Findings indicate that survivors' experience of exercise is related to their connections with self and their social environment. Survivors' choices related to exercise were impacted by their stage of recovery. A variety of social-contextual factors appeared to support or impede motivation to exercise and it was not disinterest in exercise or low confidence in the ability to exercise, but restricted exercise options perceived as safe that influenced exercise motivation.

More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services

This article explores the involvement of specialist sexual violence services, including Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs), in supporting victims/survivors of rape and sexual abuse to engage with the criminal justice system (CJS) in England and Wales. The underpinning research, conducted in one area of England, included referral data from the police and key specialist sexual violence services, interviews with 15 victims/survivors of sexual violence in contact with the police and specialist services, and interviews with 14 practitioners from sexual violence and related services. We examine the complex needs of victims/survivors of sexual violence (who have experienced historical child sexual abuse, acquaintance rape or rape in the context of intimate partner abuse), how their needs differ and vary over time, and the ways in which these diverse and changing needs are met by specialist sexual violence services. Non-specialist agencies, such as statutory mental health services, are unable to provide similarly targeted responses. The research found that specialist sexual violence services play particularly crucial roles through the use of approaches that can be characterised as flexible, enabling, holding and mending. However, this important work could easily be lost in the current climate of local service commissioning, to the great detriment of victims/survivors of sexual violence.