Health Interventions with Battered Women: From Crisis Intervention to Complex Social Prevention (From Sourcebook on Violence Against Women, P 345-369, 2001, Claire M. Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson, and Raquel K. Bergen, eds. -- See NCJ-201429)

• NCJ Number: 201447
• Author(s): Evan Stark
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 25 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In discussing health interventions with battered women, this chapter focuses on the need for clinical violence intervention, barriers to change, the components of clinical violence interventions, and challenges to clinical violence intervention.

Abstract

An underlying theme of the chapter is that health programs for battered women are most likely to succeed when they normalize and mainstream clinical violence intervention. Normalization implies that work with battered women builds on the skills and patient education techniques that clinicians successfully use in other medical or behavioral health areas such as smoking, child abuse, or sexually transmitted diseases. Mainstreaming refers to making clinical violence intervention part of routine patient care. In addition to injury, medical problems indirectly related to partner assault account for 14 percent to 20 percent of women's visits to ambulatory care or internal medicine clinics. The bulk of these presentations involve headaches from head trauma, joint pains from twisting injuries, abdominal or breast pain following blows to the torso, dyspareunia or recurrent genitourinary infections from sexual assault, dysphagia following choking, or chronic pain syndromes often due to nonviolent coercive tactics used in battering. Whereas early intervention might significantly reduce the duration and prevalence of these problems, current practice is largely ineffective and may even aggravate a victim's health. This chapter describes promising initiatives, policies, and program models; however, the lack of outcome evaluations in the field means these approaches must be viewed as illustrative rather than as proven models of best practice. As with other health problems that stem from complex social and behavioral processes that lie outside of traditional models of disease, successful health intervention for battered women depends on linking levels of response through the collaborative efforts of social service, criminal justice, and community-based providers. Public health has a long tradition of working closely with community-based groups in prevention and intervention efforts. In working with groups committed to meeting the needs of battered women, health professionals and institutions can become more knowledgeable about the needs of such victims and tailor their services to be more effective in serving the medical needs of these victims of violence. 5 notes and 55 references