Fourteen Main Obstacles on the Journey to Post-Traumatic Growth as Experienced by Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: "It Was All So Confusing"

Enabling factors that facilitate recovery among survivors of gender-based violence

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: Gender-based violence (GBV) has long-term devastating effects on psychological health, resulting in depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder. Beyond physical and mental health symptoms, GBV can affect survivors on many personal, social, and spiritual levels, impacting their ability to connect to themselves, others, and the world around them. While most research on recovery following GBV has focused on recognizing factors associated with distress or adverse outcomes, there is limited information about how they recover. WHAT THE PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: We know little about the internal characteristics that enable or support the healing journey (factors) or what the survivors do to build capacity or support for health and change (strategies). Therefore, this study discovered the main factors or strategies that GBV survivors used throughout their recovery process which included; social connection, self-care, self-understanding and spiritual connection. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Mental health nurses always encounter and deal with the GBV survivors as they always suffer from mental health issues related to their trauma. Therefore, mental health nurses can utilize our research findings to establish nursing interventions or psychoeducational programs with the aim of facilitating trauma recovery among the survivors.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Gender-based violence (GBV) is a severe worldwide phenomenon mainly affecting women. Little studies focus on the details of the recovery process that survivors of GBV go through.

AIM

To identify the enabling factors that facilitate recovery among survivors of GBV.

METHOD

We used the thematic qualitative analysis approach to analyse 20 interviews with the women survivors of GBV.

RESULTS

Our study resulted in four factors that survivors used in their recovery process (social connection, self-care, self-understanding and spiritual connection).

DISCUSSION

Recovering from an abusive relationship is a social, spiritual, cultural and psychological process. Current study confirmed the positive impact of our identified enabling factors in the recovery process of GBV survivors.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The current study illustrates findings that provide a deeper understanding of the journey to recovery following GBV, which can be helpful when guiding and supporting women who have suffered GBV to start and pursue their journey toward recovery.

"Going Forward Like a Grandmother in the Snow": Personal Survival Strategies, Motherhood, and Nature as Resources for Mothers Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence

After suffering interpersonal violence (IPV), women survivors can access various interdisciplinary services and programmes to guide their recovery. Nevertheless, many vulnerable women postpone seeking help, sometimes indefinitely. Motherhood especially complicates help-seeking because mothers often want to protect both the perpetrator and their children. Understanding women's resilience, resources, and capacities in surviving IPV, however, could guide the development of helpful services that women actually access. Thus, in our study, we sought to explore the agency, resources, and reinforcing survival experiences of survivors of IPV. Our data, gathered in Finland during the COVID-19 pandemic, consisted of 12 narratives of mothers told in Clinical Ethnographic Narrative Interviews that were subsequently subjected to thematic analysis. Five themes describing personal resources, motherhood, and nature were identified under the overarching metaphor of "going forward like a grandmother in the snow". Recognising the agency, resources, capacities, and coping mechanisms of women who have suffered IPV can help in developing professional outreach programmes, promoting women's early access to useful resources, and, in turn, helping them to stop the possible intergenerational transmission of violence.

In the jaws of death: Surviving women's experience of male intimate terrorism

AIMS

To explore the meaning of male intimate terrorism, its evolvement and its impact on women from the perspective of female survivors.

DESIGN

The Vancouver School of Doing Phenomenology.

METHODS

Nine women were interviewed 1-3 times, in all 16 interviews. The interviews were from 68 to 172 min (average 87 min). Data analysis was done through interpretive thematic analysis.

RESULTS

For the surviving women, the intimate terrorism was a horrendous experience and they felt in the 'jaws of death'. The violence got worse over time from the entrapment phase where the men were obsessed with the women and monitored them, to the silencing phase, where the men silenced the women and the death phase, where the women felt as shadows of themselves. The women also described the awakening and recovery phases. The men's intense psychological aggression, marital rape and attempts to strangle them, were the gravest aspects of intimate terrorism and what contributed to them eventually feeling psychologically 'more than dead'.

CONCLUSION

What is most striking in the findings is how the fundamental human rights of the women were violated and how close to death the women came. Nurses need to be knowledgeable about the danger of intimate terrorism, how to screen for it and provide trauma-focused nursing care to women who have been subjected to such trauma.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

The women who were interviewed in the study are not patients, but they are part of the public.

Health Outcomes in Women Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: A 20-Year Real-World Study

Intimate partner violence is characterized by violent actions against a person perpetrated by his or her former or current partner, regardless of cohabitation. It most frequently affects women, and one of its most relevant outcomes is the health problems associated with the experience of repeated violence. Thus, the main objective of this study is to analyse the prevalence of health problems among women for whom there was a medical suspicion of being victims of intimate partner violence. The specific objectives are to analyse the prevalence of (a) health risk behaviours; (b) traumatic injuries and intoxications; (c) mental health conditions; and (d) somatic diseases. We conducted a real-world, retrospective, observational, cross-sectional and multicentric study based on secondary data analyses of electronic health records and health care register data in patients of the Local Healthcare Unit of Matosinhos (between 2001 and 2021). The identified data were extracted from electronic health records corresponding to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Safe Harbor Standard. Information was obtained considering the International Classification of Diseases, the International Classification of Primary Care, and the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System, as well as clinical notes (according to previously defined keywords). Considering all information sources, 1676 cases were obtained. This number means that just 2% of the women observed at this health care unit were suspected of being victims of intimate partner violence, which is far from the known statistics. However, we found much higher rates of all health risk behaviours, trauma and intoxication cases, mental health conditions, and somatic disorders we looked for, when compared to the general population. Early detection of these cases is mandatory to prevent or minimize their related health outcomes.

The Post-Traumatic Growth Journey of Women Who Have Survived Intimate Partner Violence: A Synthesized Theory Emphasizing Obstacles and Facilitating Factors

Suffering intimate partner violence (IPV) is a devastating personal experience and post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a positive, psychological change in a person, following trauma such as IPV. There is a gap in the literature when it comes to theories on PTG after surviving IPV. The aim of this theory development was to synthesize an approach to understanding the PTG journey of female IPV survivors. According to our theory, their PTG journey includes eight main components: 1. The women’s early experience of trauma, 2. The consequences of that trauma, 3. Their experiences of IPV, 4. The consequences of IPV, 5. The facilitating factors to PTG, 6. The hindering factors to PTG, 7. Their experience of PTG, and 8. The lingering effects of IPV. According to our findings, PTG is a real possibility for female IPV survivors, and it is likely to improve their mental health, well-being, and quality of life, as well as that of their children, loved ones, and communities, thereby decreasing the damaging effects of IPV. The theory can be useful for professionals when guiding female survivors of IPV to promote their recovery and healing. Due to the lack of research in this field, additional research is needed to further develop this theory.