Domestic Violence and Abuse-Shows Other Symptoms Of Illness

Domestic Violence and Abuse-Shows Other Symptoms Of Illness and According to the National Institutes of Health, domestic violence is the top cause of injury to women ages 15 to 44. With the empathise of the entertainment world talking about pop sensation Rihanna, whose boyfriend Chris Brown has been formally charged with assaulting her, public interest in domestic violence has once again been reinvigorated.

What Baby Boomers need to know is that abuse can influence a victim’s future behavior in relationships and even in friendships, depending on whether the victim stays or leaves, according to Mark Crawford, a clinical psychologist.

Of those who stay, they are likely to stop trusting their own perceptions and become passive in both romantic and non-romantic relationships.

Crawford also states that those who make the wiser decision to leave, which is the healthier choice, often become over accommodating because they want to avoid conflict, even verbal disputes, at all costs. Some women won’t trust people easily, if at all, and won’t be able to handle even normal expressions of anger.
Some of you are probably asking…Why some women go back to their abusers?

Crawford continues to say that, “What they need to do when they get out of the relationship is make sure they’re aware of their own anger, and then they can learn how to freely express it in a healthy, normal way. If somebody is still having issues 10 years later, they just haven’t worked through it. They haven’t healed and they need to do that.”

The Journal of Women’s Health found that older African American women who were exposed to high levels of family violence, at some point in their lifetimes, whether by a partner or family member, are at a greater risk of poor mental and physical health status. New research shows that abuse victims feel the impact of violence long after it occurred and not just mentally but physically as well.

“Not just ongoing violence, which everybody thinks about, but even when it’s over, there’s something about what happens that seems to have a lingering effect that we don’t quite understand yet,” said Dr. Anuradha Paranjape, who is co-author of the study and associate professor at Temple University School of Medicine.

‘It makes sense that abused women would report worse health, given that people in stressful situations have higher levels of stress hormones, which interfere with immune function,”
Crawford said.

Of course that are other studies show a clear connection between depression and abuse. Adult women who have been abused in a relationship in the past year have rates of depression 2.5 times greater than women who have never been abused. That study was done with more than 3,000 women. These abused women are also more likely to be socially isolated, said author Amy Bonomi, who is an associate professor at The Ohio State University and doing studies on battered women and depression. Bonomi goes on to report that women who have been abused in the past five years had depression rates 1.5 times greater than those without abuse experience.

“People like to sort of think that, ‘Well, abuse is just when you have a black eye, you sustain a broken bone, But we see lots of different effects in other areas, like depression and social isolation, and we’ve actually proven that with the data,” stated Bonomi.

Further information, based on medical records of women who have been abused in the past year, Bonomi’s team found that, in addition to depression and anxiety, these women were more likely to have back pain, joint disease, bruising, urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases, chest pain and headaches.

To make matter worse, women who have suffered violence also seem to have a greater likelihood of substance abuse, but it’s unclear how the two are related, one doesn’t necessarily cause the other, and there could be other factors involved, Bonomi said.

A 2008 study of 3,333 women, which Bonomi worked on, found that middle-aged women who suffered child abuse, sexual or other physical abuse, had a greater likelihood of depression, as well as a higher body mass index. These women also spend up to one-third more than average on health care costs. About 34 percent of women in the sample said they had been abused in one form or another.

While Paranjape’s study found that women with the highest levels of abuse reported having poor health, the same number of diseases were reported among those women as the women in the sample who had less or no abuse. “This indicates that there is something else that makes abused women report feeling unwell,” she stated. Advise to physicians, “When your patient says they don’t feel so good, you might want to think about asking what other issues may be going on.”

People who have gotten out of a relationship should go through the work of learning what issues set them up in that situation, and reflect on the warning signs, Crawford said.

Experts recommend finding a counselor and other means of support, but people who have been abused should think twice about revealing too much in online support groups, the reason being that…their abusers could discover what they’re saying. Further research has also shown that violence escalates in abusive relationships among couples who go to marriage counseling.

Not all women suffer after their experiences. Some women do feel stronger having been through the experience of abuse.

Do NOT hesitate calling a domestic violence hot line, it is a good first step for anyone who is experiencing abuse. There are centers that can help you and even underground networks to save you from the truly abusive predator.

Bottom line…whether you’re a pop star or just an ordinary person who works a 40 hour week…you’re at equal risk for abuse. There is help out there for you, even your local police department can help you.

For more information on “Domestic Violence and Abuse-Shows Other Symptoms Of Illness,” go to CNN News.

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