Types of Domestic Abuse and How to Recognize Them

Adapted from an article written by Cathy Meyer

Whether domestic abuse is overt or covert, it is about control. Aggression is primitive and immature reactions to a sense of helplessness and feeling a loss of control. Domestic abuse, violet or non-violent is used to keep a sense of safety for the abuser.

Covert abuse is sly and underhanded. It is hard to identify and requires long term observation in some situations. It is made up of a few actions and creates an atmosphere of intimidation, uncertainty and perplexity in its victim.

There are many types of domestic abuse a spouse can inflict upon another spouse. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and financial abuse are some common ones.

Below are some guidelines that will help you identify some of the different types of abuse.

Read more

Types of Domestic Violence and Abuse

There are different types of domestic abuse, including emotional, physical, sexual, and economic abuse. Many abusers behave in ways that include more than one type of domestic abuse, and the boundaries between some of these behaviors may overlap.

Emotional or psychological abuse

Emotional or psychological abuse can be verbal or nonverbal. Its aim is to chip away at your feelings of self-worth and independence. If you’re the victim of emotional abuse, you may feel that there is no way out of the relationship, or that without your abusive partner you have nothing. Emotional abuse includes verbal abuse such as yelling, name-calling, blaming, and shaming. Isolation, intimidation, and controlling behavior also fall under emotional abuse. Additionally, abusers who use emotional or psychological abuse often throw in threats of physical violence.

You may think that physical abuse is far worse than emotional abuse, since physical violence can send you to the hospital and leave you with scars. But, the scars of emotional abuse are very real, and they run deep. In fact, emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse-sometimes even more so. Furthermore, emotional abuse usually worsens over time, often escalating to physical battery.

Physical abuse

When people talk about domestic violence, they are often referring to the physical abuse of a spouse or intimate partner. Physical abuse is the use of physical force against someone in a way that injures or endangers that person. There’s a broad range of behaviors that come under the heading of physical abuse, including hitting, grabbing, choking, throwing things, and assault with a weapon.

Physical assault or battering is a crime, whether it occurs inside or outside of the family. The police have the power and authority to protect you from physical attack.

Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse is common in abusive relationships. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, between one-third and one-half of all battered women are raped by their partners at least once during their relationship. Any situation in which you are forced to participate in unwanted, unsafe, or degrading sexual activity is sexual abuse. Forced sex, even by a spouse or intimate partner with whom you also have consensual sex, is an act of aggression and violence. Furthermore, women whose partners abuse them physically and sexually are at a higher risk of being seriously injured or killed.

Read more

10 Signs of Child Abuse

1. Unexplained injuries.

Visible signs of physical abuse may include unexplained burns or bruises in the shape of objects. You may also hear unconvincing explanations of a child’s injuries.

2. Changes in behavior.

Abuse can lead to many changes in a child’s behavior. Abused children often appear scared, anxious, depressed, withdrawn or overly aggressive.

3. Age-inappropriate behaviors.

Abused children may display age-inappropriate behaviors, e.g., for older children: thumb-sucking, bed-wetting or fear of the dark.

4. Fear of going home.

Abused children may express apprehension or anxiety about leaving school or about going places with the person who is abusing them.

Read more

The Mental Health Impact of Rape

The National Women’s Study produced dramatic confirmation of the mental health impact of rape. The study determined comparative rates of several mental health problems among rape victims and non-victims. The study ascertained whether rape victims were more likely than non-victims to experience these devastating mental health problems.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The first mental health problem examined was posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an extremely debilitating disorder occurring after a highly disturbing traumatic event, such as military combat or violent crime.

• Almost one-third (31%) of all rape victims developed PTSD sometime during their lifetime; and more than one in ten rape victims (11%) still has PTSD today.
• Rape victims were 6.2 times more likely to develop PTSD than women who had never been victims of crime (31% vs 5%).
• Rape victims were 5.5 times more likely to have current PTSD than those who had never been victims of crime (11% Vs 2%).

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are approximately 96.3 million adult women in the United States age 18 or older. If 13% of American women have been raped and 31% of rape victims have developed PTSD, then 3.8 million adult American women have had rape-related PTSD (RR-PTSD):

• If 11% of all rape victims have PTSD, then an estimated 1.3 million American women have RR-PTSD.
• If 683,000 women are raped each year, approximately 211,000 will develop RR-PTSD annually.

Other Mental Health Problems

Major depression is a problem affecting many women, not just rape victims. However, 30% of rape victims had experienced at least one major depressive episode in their lifetimes, and 21% of all rape victims were experiencing a major depressive episode at the time of assessment.
Read more