Effects of Childhood Physical Abuse or Childhood Sexual Abuse in Battered Women's Coping Mechanisms: Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies and Severe Depression

• NCJ Number: 216165
• Journal: Journal of Family Violence Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Dated: April 2006 Pages: 185-195
• Author(s): Debra K. Miller
• Date Published: April 2006
• Length: 11 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This comparative study examined the antecedent factors of childhood physical abuse and childhood sexual abuse as determinants of coping styles in battered women.

Abstract

Battered women who reported physical abuse in childhood were more likely to report sexual abuse as girls than battered women who were not physically abused. A perpetrator of sexual abuse will coerce or threaten his victim into silence about her abuse. For some children, the only way to comply with the perpetrators demand of silence is to repress the experience. The victim learns to distrust her own thoughts, instincts, and emotions. This results in the women becoming vulnerable to a complex variety of reactions including dissociative disorders. This is the result of the split between their emotions, cognitions, and instincts. Statistical significance was found for girls who witnessed physical violence between their parents. Violence in the home sends a clear message to the child that it a normal and unavoidable happening within the family. This leaves a strong imprint on the child’s emotional development and cognitive schema. How a woman reacts to battering varies depending on her cognitive makeup and her emotional development. Seventy-nine battered women from the Houston area Women’s Center volunteered to participate in an investigational study of the effectiveness of a self management therapy for depression between the years of 1992-1996. A statistical analysis was conducted on this sample of women to compare coping mechanisms of two categories of battered women: childhood physical abuse and no childhood physical abuse. It was hypothesized that battered women who experienced childhood physical would have a more pronounced tendency toward passive coping and that battered women who were not physically abused would exhibit an active coping mechanism, obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Tables, references