Abuse
Battered Women Syndrome
Learned Helplessness
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Rape Trauma Syndrome
Domestic Abuse (Jones,
1994a)
Leading
cause of injury in American women sending more than 1 million for medical treatment every year
Spousal violence contributes to one fourth of all suicide attempts by women
37% of all obstetric patients are battered during pregnancy
50% of homeless women and children are fleeing from male violence
Domestic Abuse
FBI
reports that over 1400 women are killed by their partners each year (6% of homicides) Lenore Walker (1992) – over one third of all women will be abused at some point in their lives
16% of American families experience violence, 3-4% experience life threatening violence
Each year 188,000 women are injured severely enough to require serious medical attention (Straus & Gelles, 1988)
Severity
Frequency
Psychopathology
Criminal history
- Low, medium, and high risk batterers
Victimology
-
No consistent typology for victims
Despite myths to the contrary domestic abuse victims cover all ethnicities, all levels of society, and all personality types Syndrome
A
group of symptoms that occur together and characterize a disease
Battered Woman Syndrome: a woman’s presumed reactions to a pattern of continual physical and psychological abuse inflicted on her by her mate
BWS is not a diagnosable Mental
Disorder
Battered Women
Syndrome
American
Psychiatric Association has recognized the syndrome in amicus briefs filed as evidence in homicide cases with selfdefense pleas.
BWS is a justification to certain crimes like homicide that is used to support defenses of self-defense or insanity
Has been used to support children who kill abusive parents, same sex partner homicides, rape victims who kill attackers, coercion to participate as co-defendant in a serious crime
Learned Helplessness
Lowered self-esteem
Impaired functioning
Loss of assumption of safety
Fear and terror
Anger/rage
Diminished alternatives
Cycle of abuse
Hypervigilance
High tolerance for cognitive inconsistency
Learned Helplessness
Seligman & Johnston (1973)
- dogs shocked in harness and placed in shuttlebox, 60% could not avoid shock
Hiroto & Seligman (1975)
- 3 groups exposed to loud noise
- Group 1 could find a button to stop noise
- Group 2 nothing would stop noise
- Group 3 asked to “please sit and listen”
Cognitive Qualifiers of
Learned Helplessness
1.
2.
3.
Inescapable aversive events inhibit learning Loss of sense of control – behavior has no effect on environment – this generalizes to multiple situations
Global vs. Specific view of negative situations External vs. Internal locus of control
Stable vs. Transitory view of life conditions
Learned Helplessness
Loose
motivation to try to control events in environment or give up easily
Cognitively, ability to learn from experience is impaired
Emotional problems:
Rats (ulcers), cats (ate less), dogs,
(critically impaired task learning), monkeys (illness) humans (high blood pressure, depression)
Cycle of Abuse
Tension building phase
2.
Acute battering incident
3.
Contrition phase
- positive and negative reinforcement powerfully affect behavior
1.
- Not all battering relationships follow this cycle (60-70%)
Forensic Assessment of
BWS
Self-reports,
medical records, interviews with family, friends, co-workers and others Abusive Behavior Observation Checklist
(Dutton, 1992)
Psychological Abuse
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Coercion and threats
Intimidation
Emotional abuse (humiliation)
Isolation
Minimization, denial, and blaming
Use of
