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maxwell
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Violence Erodes Women's Mental Health
May 23, 2002 - 12:03 PM
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Many women consider the psychological consequences of abuse to be even more serious than its physical effects. The experience of abuse often erodes women's self-esteem and puts them at greater risk of a variety of mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Depression. Depression is becoming widely recognized as a major health problem around the world.The situation is particularly acute among adult women,who in most countries suffer depression at nearly twice the rate seen in men.Some researchers have suggested that most of the difference between the incidence of depression in women and men may be due not to biology, but rather to poverty, gender-based discrimination, and gender-based violence.
Women who are abused by their partners suffer more depression, anxiety, and phobias than women who have not been abused, according to studies in Australia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and the US.Among women ages 15 to 49 in Nicaragua, for example, battered women were six times more likely to experience emotional distress, as measured on an international mental health scale, than were other women. Physical abuse was the single most important risk factor for emotional distress in this study, accounting for roughly 70% of mental health problems among women.
Sexual assault in either childhood or adulthood is also closely associated with depression and anxiety disorders.). Most likely to lead to psychological disorders are sexual abuse occurring before age seven or eight, abuse by more than one perpetrator, abuse that includes genital or anal penetration, and abuse that is frequent or continues over a long period of time.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. Many abused women experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an acute anxiety disorder that can occur when people go through or witness a traumatic event in which they feel overwhelming helplessness or threat of death or injury.
The symptoms of PTSD include mentally reliving the traumatic event through flashbacks, or “flooding”; trying to avoid anything that would remind one of the trauma; becoming numb emotionally; experiencing difficulties in sleeping and concentrating; and being easily alarmed or startled.
Rape, childhood sexual abuse, and domestic violence are among the most common causes of PTSD in women.The chances that a woman will develop PTSD after being raped are between 50% and 95%, according to studies in France, New Zealand, and the US.One study in the US found that the psychological effects of being raped were comparable to the effects of being tortured or kidnapped.
Suicide. For some women the burden of abuse is so great that they take their own lives or try to do so. Studies from a number of countries, including Nicaragua, Sweden, and the US, have shown that domestic violence is closely associated with depression and subsequent suicide.Battered women who develop PTSD appear to be most likely to try suicide.
Women who have experienced sexual assault either in childhood or as adults are also more likely to attempt suicide than other women.The link is strong even after controlling for such individual risk factors as women's sex, age, and education and for presence of PTSD symptoms and psychiatric disorders.
Alcohol and drug use. Victims of partner violence and women sexually abused as children are more likely than other women to abuse alcohol and drugs, even after controlling for such other risk factors as prior use, family environment, or parental alcoholism.In a survey among women seeking primary care, those who had been abused by their partners within the previous year were three times more likely than those not recently abused to be drinking large amounts of alcohol and four times more likely to be using drugs.
Do abused women try to blunt their reactions to trauma by dulling their senses with alcohol and drugs? Or are women who use alcohol and drugs more likely to live in ways that put them at greater risk of being abused by men? In the US a 2-year longitudinal study sought to answer this question.
The study found that women who used illicit drugs, but not those who used alcohol, were at increased risk of being assaulted over the next two years of follow-up. As expected, any past or recent history of assault was associated with increased rates of alcohol and drug use, even after controlling for prior use and other factors. These findings suggest that increased alcohol use is more of an after-the-fact coping response to victimization, whereas drug use increases risk of being victimized at the same time that victimization increases the likelihood of using drug
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Mike Cartier
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Medias affect on view of genders
February 10, 2003 - 11:34 AM
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I believe that physical and emotional abuse is an huge and growing problemb, and deffinetely needs to be stopped. However, I have found that through TV, Literature, and Movies, many womens liberation organizations have begun to degrade all men in general, and have portrayed all of us as savage, demanding, and bad in general. Not all men are abusers, and in fact, most of us are not, so I think that the infliction upon men as major abusers should be reduced.
Michael Cartier
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Lumumba Kgomotso Bahr G
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Mr
February 13, 2003 - 10:47 AM
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Hi there,
If you abuse a woman you're not a real man. The real me being those who are not abusive are guilty as the other ones (the established women abusers or animals). I don't care if it's physical or emotional if it is US or Zim. Woman abuse is woman abuse.
My point about media is pretty simple.
The real men pleading innocence are as guilty. You know why? Because they just stand back and USUALLY/ALWAYS never tell their friends or male family members to STOP. Therefore, me I think for not speaking up or defending & protecting women, for not standing up and opposing men who abuse women they are as guilty!
Same thing is happening with human rights violations, those who are quiet about human rights violations are as guilty.
So for you real men not to be seen as animals or as abusers by whomsoever DONT JUST STAND THERE!!!! Tell your fellow men-folk to stop abusing the fairer gender and then all can start working as a unit. Women will stop treating ALL men as bad people.
MEN LET US REDEEM OURSELVES & DISTANCE OURSELVES FROM THE ANIMALS CALLING THEMSELVES MEN!!! VIVA WOMEN LIB! AWAY WITH OPPRESSION, WOMEN ARE HUMANS TOO!
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Pearl
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Who are you realy?
February 17, 2003 - 02:51 AM
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I agree that violence and abuse in any form against women is wrong.
The real problem is that there can only be two effective agents in the change process at the individual/micro level ie.
1) men who are abusers facing up to the REAL problem that leads them to abuse.
2) women who are abused taking up the challenge and reclaiming their lives as their own on their own.
The way I see it, if individual women areto be proactive about their own situations things may take a turn for the better. Its no use waiting for some movement/organisation or other to come and help,it may be too late. Take the stand yourself.
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Ha Thi Lan Anh
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Re: Violence Erodes Women's Mental Health
February 17, 2003 - 03:54 AM
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I think Zanzibar had a point there. It is sad but true that there are places where people take family violence for granted and see family violence as domestic affair that they dont want to get involved.It is the matter of culture and traditions.Obviously, this need to be changed.
However,I think when men abuse women, its not only women's mental health being eroded but also men's. Men who abused women often have some kind of mental problems or bad childhood or they themselves have seen such kind of abuse in their families etc. Sometimes they abuse women simply because they wanna show they are strong while their inner self are actually weak. These violent men do need help to.
So i think to end this kind of violence needs to involve both women, men and outsiders (orgs,councelling center,social workers,police etc). Women should be encouraged to overcome traditional beliefs n break the culture of silence.Women have loz of inner strength. Probably a light to lit up the fire is what they need? Men too needs to be educated since they were boys. Men n women should have more discussions where they can learn more about themselves n their behaviours.Its easy to blame men, its harder to understand them.But only by understanding them, we can help to change them somehow. And this can only be done if there are orgs, communities that are concerned,caring and supportive to the so-called *domestic affairs*.
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Lumumba Kgomotso Bahr G
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last night I heard the screaming
February 17, 2003 - 12:50 PM
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Hello there, me again!
last night I heard the screaming
loud voices behind the wall
ANOTHER sleepless night
it will do no good
to call, the police...
and so goes the song by Tracy Chapman from United States. I believe you know her and the song, she plays guitar too. This reinforces the fact that woman abuse happens in our own households, villages, projects, towns and cities.
I ask you, why she says it will do no good to call the police?
"They always come in late if they come at all
they can't interfere in DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
They here to keep the PEACE and may the crowd disperse"
What a nerve? This is not just a domestic affair its violence what peace are they talking about leaving behind a woman in agony?
What I'm saying is that the men's (and women's) silence on this subject is so deafening. What does it mean? We can't interfere in domestic affairs?
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Lumumba Kgomotso Bahr G
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Re: Violence Erodes Women's Mental Health
February 21, 2003 - 10:09 AM
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i am a man concerned about the silence other men are caught in or promoting on purpose. what i am advocating is that you and i stand together and fight it. it is also undeniable that someone has to be proactive, let it be me and you and then we'll have the whole village or city behind us.
I am taking a stand myself as a man, a Zimbabwean and human being. What i am saying is that we can talk talk and talk a lot without action so please pearljumo, start with you, yes you. Have you told your abusive friends, neighbours and relatives (animals)to stop? I have and Im proud.
angel_on... "Sometimes they abuse women simply because they wanna show they are strong while their inner self are actually weak. These violent men do need help to." that is my BIGGEST, REALLY BIGGEST PROBLEM. these animalsneed help, send them to jail or rehab centres. they are committing crime and will continue even if they kill your sister or my aunt.
lets we ourselves change it. if you know of an animal stand up against it, LET HiM STOP In fact i should say let IT (animal)stop. Some abusedwomen might be too ERODED MENTALLY to even think about standing up themselves.
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Ha Thi Lan Anh
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i wanna read this book when out of broke
May 26, 2003 - 04:19 AM
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http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,962804,00.html
Bloomsbury £9.99, pp144
The first thing that strikes you in Simon Baron-Cohen's book, which is about the difference between male and female brains, is the author's anxiety. 'I have spent more than five years writing this book,' he tells us. 'This is because the topic was just too politically sensitive to complete in the 1990s.'
Writing about sex differences is a problem, he says, because 'some people say that even looking for sex differences reveals a sexist mind'. But things have changed. 'Fortunately,' says Baron-Cohen, 'there are now growing numbers of people, feminists included, who recognise that asking such questions need not lead to the perpetuation of sexual inequalities.' The coast is now clear. As a society, we are ready for the truth.
Baron-Cohen needn't have worried. The more you delve into the male brain, the worse it looks. And the more you delve into the female brain, the better it looks. When you take the lid off, the male brain looks really clunky - it is competitive, aggressive, narrow and insecure. As children, boys develop an affinity with toy vehicles. Girls, in contrast, warm to people. Boys make obsessive lists. Girls make friends. Adolescent boys become tongue-tied and inarticulate. Girls develop a wide range of linguistic and social skills. There are, the author tells us, '412 discrete human emotions'. Girls grow up with a better ability to distinguish between them.
There is, Baron-Cohen believes, an essential difference between the male and female brain. Males are 'systemisers' - they like to focus on how objects work. Females, on the other hand, are 'empathisers' - they are good at the feeling, sharing, and communicating of emotions. And this is not entirely a culturally produced difference. It starts too early for that. In one experiment, a female colleague of Baron-Cohen's made a lifesized reproduction of her own head, but with the features re-arranged so that it looked monstrous. 'Around the lab,' says Baron-Cohen, 'we called it the Alien.' This woman then showed 100 newborn babies her own face and the Alien, and found that 'girls looked for longer at the face', while boys preferred the Alien.
Baron-Cohen tells us all sorts of things about how male and female brains work. Take psychopaths. 'They are the ones who do really nasty things, like holding someone hostage, and then cutting them up.' And who are these people? 'Such people tend to be male,' he tells us. When it comes to straight murder, research has shown that 'male-on-male homicide was 30 to 40 times more frequent than female-on-female homicide'.
Boys gravitate towards weapons; if they can't find toy guns or swords, then they 'will use anything as a substitute'. Boys show off, 'giving a running commentary on their actions'. Young women, in contrast, are sociable. They like to go shopping together and don't mind sharing changing cubicles. Young men are terrified that people will think they're gay.
The more you read, the worse it looks for men. Women like to talk about emotions and relationships. Men talk about sport and traffic. Women are better users of language. They use more words, make fewer errors, use longer sentences and more complex grammatical structures. Men pause more. Men stutter more.
On the other hand, men are better at discerning spatial relationships between things - they are good judges of, say, the trajectory of a spear coming towards them. Women tend to navigate by using landmarks. Men make three-dimensional maps in their heads. They are fiends for detail. 'Most birdwatchers, trainspotters and planespotters are male,' says Baron-Cohen.
Why have the sexes developed so differently? Our brains, he says, have adapted according to natural selection. Men needed to make and use tools. In order to survive, they had to become obsessed with objects, with how things worked. They needed to study the habitats of the animals they preyed on. There was a lot of going into the wilderness and sitting still for hours, staring.
Women, on the other hand, often moved away from their birth group to join the community of their mate. They had to get good at talking to people and reading their emotions, starting with the ability to understand infants by looking into their faces. Even now, women are experts at eye-contact.
So men are nerds and women are socialisers. This is the terrible truth that Baron-Cohen was so worried about revealing. Sometimes he tells us not to make too much of it. 'Not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain,' he says. Still, he gives us some fascinating material on the 'extreme male brain', which, he says, is close to the autistic brain. People who are autistic, or who have the related Asperger's syndrome, have minds which seem to be extreme versions of the male brain. One man with Asperger's says that those who share his condition 'are like salt-water fish who are forced to live in fresh water'. Is this how men feel, now that communicating is more important than fighting?
This is a fascinating, thought-provoking book. Women will want to talk about it. Men will sit silent and brood over its details, staring into the fire.
How to Mow the Lawn by Sam Martin looks as if it is intended as a witty gift. The book is subtitled 'The lost art of being a man' and is illustrated with deeply serious and, therefore, ironic, 1950s-looking pictures of men with slicked-back hair. They lean on their lawnmowers, having serious, manly conversations. The book contains information on many things as well as mowing - 'building a barbecue', for instance. We are told that 'building something with bricks will put hairs on your chest'. I laughed a few times.
In a way, the book celebrates our newfound lack of anxiety in the gender debate. We're all beginning to believe that men are essentially different from women. Baron-Cohen's book makes these differences seem inevitable; Martin's makes them seem funny. And we might as well laugh.
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clyde smets
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Wont to buy Art
May 26, 2003 - 12:22 PM
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There is a good site what has very real art it is www.smetsart.aus.sh and it is my dads website how cool is that.
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nelson
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Re: Violence Erodes Women's Mental Health
June 3, 2003 - 09:17 AM
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man dang guy too much to read!!!!violence is bad is all i can say....
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