essay on violence in the family

Essay on Family Violence

In the United States, family violence covers a range of behaviors committed by an individual against a family member. All the behaviors aim at controlling a family member through fear and include economic abuse, intentionally damaging property of a family member, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and any other behavior that makes a family member feel that their security is jeopardized. Violence is a reality in many households across the globe. Additionally, an act of violence occurs if a kid sees, hears, or lives in a family that experiences violence. The law safeguards that kid and family member who was the victim of the violence. Family violence can affect anyone irrespective of their location, status, wealth, religion, ability, cultural background, sexual identity, gender, or age. Family violence is among the main factors to illness, disability, and even death to women aged 15 to 44 years. Family violence is an essential social issue since it has a large negative effect on the victims. Even though either females or males can cause family violence, it is normally caused by a male because of large physical identity.

Family violence is intimidation, force, threats, or violence to manipulate or control a partner or a family member. There is a significant gap in such relationships as far as power is concerned where violence or abusive behavior is used to control others. Research by Fitz-Gibbon et al. (2018) has revealed that men are the most the perpetrators of family violence, and women and children are the victims. One in three women across the globe experience violence from their partners. Family violence can occur in any relationship, including between homosexual, and heterosexual relationships, family members, couples, and against persons who are disabled or elderly. Family violence can affect every person irrespective of their economic or social status or cultural and racial background.

Causes of Family Violence

Family violence is all about control and power. Abuse can be experienced by anyone irrespective of religion, sexual orientation, gender, or race. Being hurt by a spouse or an intimate partner can be a very traumatizing and confusing experience for victims. Persons on the outside might wonder why victims do not “simply go away.” Still, violent or abusive relationships are often marked by complicated dynamics that make it complex when it comes to getting away. Additionally, despite cultural and societal stigma around who may experience family violence can occur to anyone. About ten million people in the United States experience family violence annually. If you are going through family violence, you mustn’t be at fault for your partner’s behavior. Victims of family violence do not make their abusers punish or target them with psychological or physical abuse. Perpetrators use family violence as a tool for gaining control and power over their targets. Family violence is a choice on the part of the perpetrator. However, some underlying aspects may at times contribute to the propensity of a person. Family violence causes worsened physical and psychological health, decreased quality of life, decreased productivity, and mortality in some cases. It can be complex to identify. Many cases of family violence are not reported to legal authorities or healthcare providers. It is normally the victimization of a person with whom the perpetrator takes advantage of their victim in the quest of having control and power over them.

The rates of family violence are higher in remote, rural, and regional areas. Social and geographical frameworks in these societies and unique social norms and values result in particular experiences of family violence. The issues mentioned above affect responses to family violence in rural societies and the ability of women to look for help and access services. Poor understanding of family violence by legal, social, and health services in remote, rural, and regional communities has been identified as an important matter as far as victims of family violence are concerned. It is complex when it comes to ascertaining accurate rates of family violence in any context since most victims do not report the cases to the authorities. Additionally, family violence is less likely to be disclosed to involved parties in non-urban communities. However, several types of research have revealed that women in remote, rural, and regional areas are more likely to have experienced family violence from their partners. Straus & Smith (2017) pointed out that the higher rates of family violence in non-urban communities were most times due to the higher indigenous population in the areas mentioned above. On the other hand, in recent research, most family violence cases in the United States included certain predominantly white agricultural areas. Family violence has to be understood in the context of a history of colonization, discrimination, racism, forced child removal, and the resulting intergenerational trauma from this history. There are many shared aims in victims of family violence and the barriers to leaving a toxic relationship between victims in rural societies and victims from other geographical areas. These include family pressure to remain in a relationship, limited means of leaving, economic concerns, and fear of the partner’s threat as if they move from a relationship. On the other hand, there are geographical and social issues that are particular to the experience of family violence for victims living in rural areas.

Interventions to Address Family Violence

In today’s world, most societal efforts to address family violence in the United States have focused on crisis intervention through community organizations. While the agencies mentioned above offer important help when addressing family violence, this is at most times only appealed for the greatest cases. Government apparatus rely on notification of family violence from outside sources. Consequently, they might be responding to only ten percent of family violence cases. Healthcare professionals are in a good position to affect victims of family violence before the abuse goes to unmanageable levels. Healthcare professionals come into contact with victims of family violence for routine healthcare services. The victims visit healthcare facilities to seek routine treatment (Segrave et al., 2020). As a result, healthcare providers can help the victims to seek help from the involved parties so that perpetrators can be made to face the full force of the law. They are in a good position of engaging in early identification, support, and referral of victims before the abuse reaches unmanageable levels (Douglas & Nagesh, 2021). When we talk about family violence, we normally think about family violence, yet the experience of abuse affects spiritual, social, and mental health equally. There is nothing new when it comes to family violence (Bozzay et al., 2020). What is new in violence within families is to treat it as a health issue and develop interventions and policies to prevent it from taking place. The guidelines mentioned above are part of that emerging intervention structure. Healthcare professionals are progressively recognized as having an important part in the early intervention and avoidance of violence within families. In the United States, health strategy and consultation with clients, family violence has been regularly positioned as among the top priorities for social workers and healthcare professionals to address.

Long-term Outcomes of Family Violence

If you are a victim of family violence, it can hurt you in numerous ways – sexually, emotionally, socially, mentally, physically, and more. Additionally, family violence may affect the relationship you have with other family members. It can have a significant impact on the love and attention needed by the family members mentioned above. If you are in the situation mentioned above, you need to be aware that family violence is not your fault. The perpetrators of family violence are responsible for it and how it affects the day-to-day activities with other family members (Fitz-Gibbon et al., 2018). Family violence has a significant effect on the relationship with other family members. This can occur if the perpetrator uses emotional abuse to undermine the relationship with other family members. The perpetrator may use family violence to say nasty things to other family members, force them to disobey others, and prevent them from being happy (Douglas & Kerr, 2018). Additionally, it might affect the mental health of the victims. It is common for persons subjected to family violence to go through sleep problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, anxiety, depression, and self-medication with substance abuse. Family abuse has numerous serious impacts on households. It can result in injury or even death in extreme cases.

Additionally, it can result in ongoing issues for family members living or have lived in a violent family. A person who has lived in a violent home learns to address their issues violently instead of developing strategies for solving problems amicably. Some long-term effects include copying violent means and behaving similarly when faced with stressful issues (Reeves, 2020). They might learn that there is no problem behaving in a manner that is degrading to other persons, as they have seen this occur in the violent situations they witnessed. Proper counseling and support will help them to learn how to treat others with respect and trust. Some people who depend on alcohol and other drugs cannot relate with other family members with the necessary respect. For some, drug and alcohol dependence is overwhelming to the extent that it takes priority over everything else without excluding looking after the needs of other family members. It is important to note that family violence does not resolve itself. If you look for reinforcement to take action against family violence, it shows other family members that abuse is unacceptable and should be brought to an end. Social workers and other involved parties can help stop family violence at the end of the day. In other words, victims of family violence should seek the assistance of social workers trained to help them overcome the experience they have been made to go through by their perpetrators. Reports of family violence continue.

Reports of family violence continue to strain the capacity of medical facilities, social services agencies, courts, and law enforcement agencies. Simultaneously, many prevention and treatment programs are offering services to perpetrators and victims. Limited research knowledge exists concerning the efficiency of the programs mentioned above. However, such information is inaccessible, scattered, and complex when it comes to getting it. Social workers and other involved parties aim to increase the uptake and evidence-based health promotion interventions and programs that are important for the prevention and looking at the issues that contribute to family violence (Reeves, 2020). The programs mentioned above are meant to prevent and address family violence and support the health of the victims. The programs should have the capacity to support scale-up and sustainability of strategies that are thought to be effective.

In summary, in the United States, family violence covers a range of behaviors committed by an individual against a family member. All the behaviors aim at controlling a family member through fear and include economic abuse, intentionally damaging property of a family member, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and any other behavior that makes a family member feel that their security is jeopardized. Violence is a reality in many households across the globe. Additionally, an act of violence occurs if a kid sees, hears, or lives in a family that experiences violence. The law safeguards that kid and family member who was the victim of the violence. Family violence can affect anyone irrespective of their location, status, wealth, religion, ability, cultural background, sexual identity, gender, or age.

Bozzay, M. L., Joy, L. N., & Verona, E. (2020). Family violence pathways and externalizing behavior in youth. Journal of interpersonal violence, 35(23-24), 5726-5752.

Douglas, H., & Kerr, K. (2018). Domestic and Family Violence, Reproductive Coercion and the Role for Law. Journal of law and medicine, 26(2), 341-355.

Douglas, H., & Nagesh, R. (2021). Domestic and family violence, child support and ‘the exemption’. Journal of Family Studies, 27(4), 540-555.

Fitz-Gibbon, K., Elliott, K., & Maher, J. (2018). Investigating adolescent family violence in Victoria: Understanding experiences and practitioner perspectives. Monash University.

Reeves, E. (2020). Family violence, protection orders, and systems abuse: views of legal practitioners. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 32(1), 91-110.

Segrave, M., Hedwards, B., & Tyas, D. (2020). Family violence and exploitation: Examining the contours of violence and exploitation. The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking, 437-450.

Straus, M. A., & Smith, C. (2017). Family patterns and primary prevention of family violence. In Physical violence in American families (pp. 507-526). Routledge.

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Domestic Abuse: Types, Causes, and Impact

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Yolanda Renteria, LPC, is a licensed therapist, somatic practitioner, national certified counselor, adjunct faculty professor, speaker specializing in the treatment of trauma and intergenerational trauma.

Boy_Anupong / Getty Images

• Supporting Someone

Domestic abuse , also known as domestic violence or family abuse, is a pattern of behavior that is used to hurt, terrorize, manipulate, or gain control over a family member.

Domestic abuse may be perpetrated by any member of the household, such as an intimate partner, parent, child, sibling, relative, or staff member. When domestic abuse is perpetrated by an intimate partner, it is referred to as intimate partner violence. When a child is a victim of domestic abuse, it is referred to as child abuse .

People from marginalized groups are at greater risk of experiencing abuse. However, it’s important to recognize that anyone can be a victim of abuse, regardless of their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, or faith.

Domestic abuse and intimate partner violence are serious public health issues globally. In fact, it is believed that domestic abuse is the most prevalent but least reported crime in the United States.

This article explores the types, causes, signs, and impact of domestic abuse, as well as some ways to support someone who has been abused.

If you or a loved one are a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential assistance from trained advocates. 

If you are in immediate danger, call 911 . For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

Types of Domestic Abuse

Domestic abuse can take many forms. These are some of the different types of domestic abuse:

• Physical abuse , which is when someone harms the other person’s body, causing them to experience pain or suffer physical injuries. Physical abuse includes slapping, beating, hitting, kicking, punching, pinching, biting, choking, pushing, grabbing, shaking, or burning another person.
• Sexual abuse , which includes any form of touching or sexual contact without the other person’s explicit consent. Sexual abuse also includes any form of sexual contact between an adult and a person below the age of 18 .
• Emotional or psychological abuse , which includes yelling, cursing, name-calling, bullying, coercing, humiliating, gaslighting, harassing, infantilizing , threatening, frightening, isolating, manipulating, or otherwise controlling another person. Emotional/psychological abuse can be just as harmful as sexual or physical abuse.
• Neglect , which involves failing to provide a child or a dependent adult with necessities such as food, water, clothing, shelter, medical care, or supervision. Neglect can also be emotional, which involves failing to provide love, care, and emotional support to a family member.
• Financial abuse , which involves taking control of an individual's finances by controlling their income, restricting their ability to work, or accumulating debts in their name.
• Cultural identity abuse , which involves using aspects of a person's cultural identity to cause pain. This might involve threatening to out a person as LGBTQ+, using racial or ethnic slurs, or not permitting the person to practice traditions and customs of their faith.
• Technological abuse , which involves using technology as a means to threaten, stalk, harass, and abuse the other person. Examples of this form of abuse include using tracking devices to monitor someone's movements or online activities and demanding to have access to the person's social media or email accounts.
• Immigration abuse , which involves inflicting harm on a person by using their immigration status to threaten or restrict aspects of their life. Examples of this might involve threatening the individual's family members, destroying or hiding their immigration papers, and threatening to have them deported.

Signs of Domestic Abuse

It’s important to recognize domestic abuse because the victims are our friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors.

These are some of the signs that someone is experiencing domestic abuse:

• Being upset or agitated
• Being withdrawn or unresponsive
• Exhibiting signs of fear or nervousness around certain people
• Displaying sudden changes in behavior or unusual behaviors
• Having injuries such as cuts, bruises, black eyes, or broken bones
• Having bruises, bleeding, torn clothes, or bloodstains around genital areas
• Being dehydrated, malnourished, or unkempt
• Living in unsafe or unsanitary conditions
• Wearing long-sleeved clothing or sunglasses to cover up bruising
• Having unusual eating or sleeping habits
• Being extremely meek and apologetic
• Losing interest in daily activities
• Isolating from friends and family

Causes of Domestic Abuse

Research suggests that there are a number of different factors that contribute to the prevalence of domestic violence:

• Cultural factors: Historically, many patriarchal cultures have permitted the beating and chastising of women and children, who are viewed as a man’s property. Additionally, the concept of a woman’s sexuality is often tied to the family’s honor. Therefore, any actions or behaviors by a woman that are perceived as acts of dishonor toward the family are met with judgment and abuse.
• Legal factors: Law enforcement agencies tend to treat domestic abuse as a private family matter and sometimes hesitate to intervene or get involved. Acts of domestic abuse are often treated with more leniency than crimes committed by strangers. In fact, sexual abuse by intimate partners is not even recognized as a crime in many cultures.
• Economic factors: Lack of economic resources is often associated with domestic abuse.
• Environmental factors: People who have grown up in abusive environments and witnessed or experienced abuse as children may be more likely to perpetrate domestic abuse as adults. This is referred to as the intergenerational cycle of abuse .
• Social factors: Society still tends to blame victims for being abused, which can make it difficult for them to come forward and report their abusers. Victims are often scrutinized minutely, and any imperfections are held against them.
• Substance use: Excessive use of substances such as alcohol and drugs can lead to domestic abuse.

Impact of Domestic Abuse

Being abused can cause a person to:

• Think they did something to deserve the abuse
• Believe they are unwanted and unworthy of love or respect
• Feel guilty or ashamed
• Feel helpless and powerless
• Feel used , controlled, or manipulated
• Be terrified of doing something that will upset their abuser
• Behave differently in order to avoid upsetting their abuser
• Have difficulty sleeping, concentrating, or participating in activities they once enjoyed
• Develop mental health conditions such as depression or anxiety
• Develop physical health conditions such as heart disease, digestive issues, muscle and bone conditions, fertility problems, and nervous system disorders
• Feel responsible for regulating the emotions and behaviors of their abuser
• Feel hypervigilant and like they are constantly walking on eggshells
• Not feel good enough or capable to make it on their own
• Constantly doubt their perception and their decisions

Experiencing domestic abuse can cause physical and mental health issues that persist long after the abuse stops.

Supporting Someone Who Has Been Abused

These are some ways to support someone who has been abused:

• Listen to the person and believe them
• Honor where they are in their process and don't push your personal views
• Offer assistance and let them know they’re not alone
• Help them note down all the details they can remember
• Remind them that they’re not to blame for anything that has happened to them
• Encourage them to seek professional support, either through a confidential hotline or via other medical or mental healthcare providers
• Encourage them to speak up about the abuse and report their abuser to the authorities, because keeping it secret only protects their abuser
• Respect whatever choice they make and let them know you'll be there for them regardless of what they decide

A Word From Verywell

Domestic abuse can take many different shapes and forms. It can be extremely traumatic to experience, leaving behind physical wounds, emotional scars, and health issues. It can affect every aspect of the person’s life and make it difficult for them to function.

Recovery takes time, but speaking up about the abuse, leaving an abusive situation , and seeking treatment are important steps that can help.

United Nations. What is domestic abuse?

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Preventing intimate partner violence .

Li S, Zhao F, Yu G. Childhood maltreatment and intimate partner violence victimization: A meta-analysis . Child Abuse Negl . 2019;88:212-224. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.11.012

City Government of Annapolis, Maryland. Myths about domestic violence .

Nemours Foundation. Abuse .

Women Against Abuse. Types of abuse .

Department of Human Services. Domestic violence crisis and prevention .

Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Types and signs of abuse .

Yakubovich AR, Stöckl H, Murray J, Melendez-Torres GJ, Steinert JI, Glavin CEY, Humphreys DK. Risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence against women: Systematic review and meta-analyses of prospective-longitudinal studies . Am J Public Health . 2018;108(7):e1-e11. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304428

Greene CA, Haisley L, Wallace C, Ford JD. Intergenerational effects of childhood maltreatment: A systematic review of the parenting practices of adult survivors of childhood abuse, neglect, and violence . Clin Psychol Rev . 2020;80:101891. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101891

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Emotional and verbal abuse .

Malik M, Munir N, Ghani MU, Ahmad N. Domestic violence and its relationship with depression, anxiety, and quality of life . Pak J Med Sci . 2021;37(1):191-194. doi:10.12669/pjms.37.1.2893

Cleveland Clinic. How to heal from emotional abuse .

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

• Family Essays

Family violence Essay

Until recently, the family setting was a safe haven for people and crime only happened in the streets. However, this reality has been distorted by the rising crimes that occur in homes among family members (Pagelow & Pagelow, 1984). The family law action and the family violence refer to the aspects of family violence ant the courts role in dealing with violators of this law. This is a bid to protect the innocence of the children. The family law act 1975 section (60 b) stipulates underlying principles that promote their interests. It “protects children from physical and psychological harm, from being subjected to or exposed to abuse, neglect or family violence”.

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According to Barnet et al. (2011), family violence refers to violence between family member’s i.e. husbands, wives, children and parents. The APA dictionary of psychology defines domestic violence as “any action by a person that causes physical harm to one or more members of his or her family unit” (p.23).Family violence can be learned through cultural values which are repeatedly communicated through media and institutions that tolerate it. Alcohol and drug abuse could be another force of family violence. According to Halter & Varcarolis (2014), alcohol and drugs cloud one’s judgment (p. 540). However; alcohol could be used as a scapegoat to avoid arrests and punishment when caught in the act. Anger is another force that could cause people to be entrapped in family violence. Lack of skills to handle anger and stress may cause overwhelming problems for both victim and perpetrator as forms of communications may have broken down (p.11). Psychological conditions such as bipolar may contribute to cases of violence. Such conditions should be treated and people informed of the condition in case of an attack.

In all different cases discussed above aggression stands out as perpetrators of violence use this tool to overpower their victims. It is also important for afflicted families and individuals to come out and seek the protection of the law and access counseling services.

Physical child abuse

The children’s act 38 of 2005 gives clear outlines children’s rights and parents responsibilities towards children. The law has provisions of protection against physical child abuse. Many facets have been associated with child abuse. These include individual pathology, parent –child interaction, past abuse in the family and situational factors. (Bryant, 2011) discusses different theories of physical abuse according to Crosson-Tower (2008) which are linked to the children’s act of 2005.

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The pathology theory focuses on the idea that abusers have personality or biology makeup issues. The issues may include anger control problems, low tolerance for frustrations, rigidity or being disorganized. Such instances point to parent’s failure to manage their lives, therefore, intruding into their children’s lives. Such parents may not be in a position to empathize with their children and expose them to ridicule and physical punishment. Parent child relationship theory explains the types of parents who are prone to abuse their children and children likely to be abused. So parents concentrate on children’s the wrong instead of achievements and offer no praise. In this theory, the child may assume the responsibility of the care giver .The less skilled parent has a negative perception of the child and sees nothing in them.

Social learning or past abuse theory concentrates not only on what children learn or experience but also what they do not learn as a result of the experiences. The abusive parents become role models. Such children believe that violence is acceptable as a method of child rearing and discipline, (Crosson-Tower, 2008). It is crucial to note that not all children in abusive homes become abusive in their later years. Those who break the cycle maintain a healthy relation with those that supported them emotionally while growing up.

Child sexual abuse

Every society has established rules that govern mating or sexual intercourse. The prohibition to mate with certain relatives is known as an incest taboo. The most universal form of an incest taboo involves mating between members of the nuclear family. The protection of children from sexual offenses Act, 2012 is a comprehensive law provided to protect children from all forms of violence by incorporating friendly mechanisms to report, record, and investigate and trial of offences through special courts.

The inbreeding theory explains the existence of the incest taboo focuses on and the potential harm it causes to the family. The theory was proposed before the introduction genetics which holds that mating between family members may produce children with genetic defects. Evidence to support this information is lacking. Outbreeding which is practiced by human populations has positive benefits such as an increase in genetic variation, improved health and lower rates of mortality. This is because the inbreeding theory elicits different views among the legislatures. The theory focuses on the biological consequences of incest (Ferraro & Andreatta, 2010).

The family disruption theory associated to Bronislaw Malinowski, 1927 holds that mating between mother and son, brother and sister, father and daughter will lead to jealousy and disrupt the family’s ability to function as a unit. For example if this kind of arrangements would be allowed, it would unhealthy competition for sexual satisfaction leading to conflict. This theory originated to repress sexual urges within the nuclear family. This also would cause the problem of the role ambiguity within a family setting. The theory holds that there is more to be gained when one marries from another group. Marrying from different families strengthens social ties. This theory endeavors to create a wider social network of inter family alliances (Ferraro & Andreatta, 2010).

Characteristics of a spousal abuser

The family act of 1975 shields victims of violence from violent actions by abusers. In this case, we will discuss the spousal abusers. The perpetrators have low self-esteem and build dependency on women perceived as ‘winner’ and gain satisfaction through their partner’s accomplishments. When they lose control they dominate and feel superior to their women. In such scenarios, the abuser is comfortable in isolation and may have difficulties in building and maintaining close and personal ties within the family and outside.

The perpetrators are also traditional in that they believe in the patriarchal system, male supremacy and stereotyped the masculinity. They have authoritarian styles of leadership in the family and esteem persons of higher authority. They are very moody and may pose as loving husbands, mothers and sometimes with no apparent reasons revert to anger. This is sometimes referred to as dual personalities where a victim’s mood suddenly changes. In this state, they are unable to express their feelings. They are often unemployed, underemployed or are dissatisfied with their jobs. They may also be very unproductive and unorganized when executing their work. This causes problems in the work place as they pass off as unreliable and demotivated in their duties (Pagelow & Pagelow, 1984).

Abusers lack assertiveness which results to aggression to get what they want. They lack a sense of direction which makes it difficult for people to get reach them. In some instances the aggressor may result to absconding all his duties due to the belief of being inefficient and unproductive. The aggressors shift to alcohol and are highly dependent. Alcohol helps the aggressor to escape from troubles. If the aggressor was socialized or brought up where alcohol consumption was associated with drunken behavior (Pagelow & Pagelow, 1984).

Criminal justice response to partner violence

Historically, the criminal justice failed to adequately respond to domestic violence acts within homes. To rectify this situation pro arrest policies were initiated by law enforcement agencies due to activism by feminist groups reacting to police inaction. The changes made in the 1980’s focused on the impact of pro arrest when dealing with battered women. The crime of intimate violence then was largely viewed as a private issue rather than a social problem as legal and social institutions preferred the hands-off-approach (Schmidt, & Sherman 1996).

The Minneapolis domestic violence that sort to evaluate the effectiveness of police responses was implemented in 1981-1982 by Lawrence Sherman who was director of the police foundation. The design called the police to randomly select three categories of offenders who would face arrest, forced separation from their spouse and forced counseling. The findings for this response bent towards arrest as the more effective response. Those that faced arrest had lower rates of committing the offence again as opposed to those who went through counseling or spouses separated from them (Sherman &Cohn, 1989).

Sherman & Cohn (1989) hold that the subsequent experiments commissioned by the institute of justice were required to address domestic violence incidents that drew police attention. They were also to use see repeat offenders determine the extent and use arrests as one of the treatments. The results from these tests showed variation as no one state recorded similar results as Minneapolis. The different results recorded were as a result of sites studied, the alternative treatments that were compared to arrests and many more factors. The sites studied include Nebraska, charlotte, Wisconsin, Miami-Dade county, Colorado among others (p.117-144).

Barnett, O. W., Miller-Perrin, C. L., & Perrin, R. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan: An introduction. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Bryant, C. D. (2011). The Routledge handbook of deviant behaviour. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Crosson-Tower, C. (2008). Understanding child abuse and neglect. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Ferraro, G. P., & Andreatta, S. (2010).Cultural anthropology: an applied perspective (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Halter, M. J., & Varcarolis, E. M. (2014). Varcarolis’ foundations of psychiatric mental health

nursing: A clinical approach. St. Louis, Mo: Elsevier.

Pagelow, M. D., & Pagelow, L. W. (1984). Family violence. New York: Praeger.

Schmidt, J. D., & Sherman, L. W. (1996). Does arrest deter domestic violence. Do arrests and restraining orders work, 43.

Sherman, L. W., & Cohn, E. G. (1989). The impact of research on legal policy: The Minneapolis domestic violence experiment. Law and Society Review, 117-144.

The Family Law Act and family violence. (n.d.). The Family Law Act and family violence.

Retrieved April 22, 2014, from http://www.familylawcourts.gov.au/wps/w

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Violence in Families: Assessing Prevention and Treatment Programs (1998)

Chapter: 9 conclusions and recommendations, 9 conclusions and recommendations.

The problems of child maltreatment, domestic violence, and elder abuse have generated hundreds of separate interventions in social service, health, and law enforcement settings. This array of interventions has been driven by the urgency of the different types of family violence, client needs, and the responses of service providers, advocates, and communities. The interventions now constitute a broad range of institutional services that focus on the identification, treatment, prevention, and deterrence of family violence.

The array of interventions that is currently in place and the dozens of different types of programs and services associated with each intervention represent a valuable body of expertise and experience that is in need of systematic scientific study to inform and guide service design, treatment, prevention, and deterrence. The challenge for the research community, service providers, program sponsors, and policy makers is to develop frameworks to enhance critical analyses of current strategies, interventions, and programs and identify next steps in addressing emerging questions and cross-cutting issues. Many complexities now characterize family violence interventions and challenge the development of rigorous scientific evaluations. These complexities require careful consideration in the development of future research, service improvements, and collaborative efforts between researchers and service providers. Examples of these complexities are illustrative:

• The interventions now in place in communities across the nation focus services on discrete and isolated aspects of family violence. They address different aspects of child maltreatment, domestic violence, and elder abuse. Some
• interventions have an extensive history of experience, and others are at a very early stage of development.
• Many interventions have not been fully implemented because of limited funding or organizational barriers. Thus in many cases it is too early to expect that research can determine whether a particular intervention or strategy (such as deterrence or prevention) is effective because the intervention may not yet have sufficient strength to achieve its intended impact.
• The social and institutional settings of many interventions present important challenges to the design of systematic scientific evaluations. The actual strength or dosage of a particular program can be directly influenced by local or national events that stimulate changes in resources, budgets, and personnel factors that influence its operation in different service settings. Variations in service scope or intensity caused by local service practices and social settings are important sources of "noise" in cross-site research studies; they can directly affect evaluation studies in such key areas as definitions, eligibility criteria, and outcome measures.
• Emerging research on the experiences of family violence victims and offenders suggests that this is a complex population composed of different types of individuals and patterns of behavior. Evaluation studies thus need to consider the types of clients served by particular services, the characteristics of those who benefited from them, and the attributes of those who were resistant to change.

In this chapter the committee summarizes its overall conclusions and proposes policy and research recommendations. A key question for the committee was whether and when the research evidence is sufficient to guide a critical examination of particular interventions. In some areas, the body of research is sufficient to inform policy choices, program development, evaluation research, data collection, and theory-building; the committee makes recommendations for current policies and practices in these areas below. In other areas, although the research base is not yet mature enough to guide policy and program development, some interventions are ready for rigorous evaluation studies. For this second tier of interventions, the committee makes recommendations for the next generation of evaluation studies. The committee then identifies a set of four topics for basic research that reflect current insights into the nature of family violence and trends in family violence interventions. A final section makes some suggestions to increase the effectiveness of collaborations between researchers and service providers.

Conclusions

The committee's conclusions are derived from our analysis of the research literature and discussions with service providers in the workshops and site visits, rather than from specific research studies. This analysis takes a client-oriented

approach to family violence interventions, which means that we focus on how existing services in health, social services, and law enforcement settings affect the individuals who come in contact with them.

• The urgency of the need to respond to the problem of family violence and the paucity of research to guide service interventions have created an environment in which insights from small-scale studies are often adopted into policy and professional practice without sufficient independent replication or reflection on their possible shortcomings. Rigorous evaluations of family violence interventions are confined, for the most part, to small or innovative programs that provide an opportunity to develop a comparison or control study, rather than focusing on the major existing family violence interventions.
• This situation has fostered a series of trial-and-error experiences in which a promising intervention is later found to be problematic when employed with a broader and more varied population. Major treatment and prevention interventions, such as child maltreatment reporting systems, casework, protective orders, and health care for victims of domestic violence, battered women's shelters, and elder abuse interventions of all types, have not been the subjects of rigorous evaluation studies. The programmatic and policy emphasis on single interventions as panaceas to the complex problems of family violence, and the lack of sufficient opportunity for learning more about the service interactions, client characteristics, and contextual factors that could affect the impact of different approaches, constitute formidable challenges to the improvement of the knowledge base and prevention and treatment interventions in this filed.
• In all areas of family violence, after-the-fact services predominate over preventive interventions. For child maltreatment and elder abuse, case identification and investigative services are the primary form of intervention; services designed to prevent, treat, or deter family violence are relatively rare in social service, health, and criminal justice settings (with the notable exceptions of foster care and family preservation services). For domestic violence, interventions designed to treat victims and offenders and deter future incidents of violence are more common, but preventive services remain relatively underdeveloped.
• The current array of family violence interventions (especially in the areas of child maltreatment and elder abuse) is a loosely coupled network of individual programs and services that are highly reactive in nature, focused primarily on the detection of specific cases. It is a system largely driven by events, rather than one that is built on theory, research, and data collection. Interventions are oriented toward the identification of victims and the substantiation and documentation of their experiences, rather than the delivery of recommended services to reduce the incidence and consequences of family violence in the community overall. As a result, enormous resources are invested to develop evidence that certain victims or offenders need treatment, legal action, or other interventions, and comparatively limited funds are available for the treatment and support services themselves—a
• situation that results in lengthy waiting lists, discretionary decisionmaking processes in determining which cases are referred for further action, and extensive variation in a service system's ability to match clients with appropriate interventions.
• The duration and intensity of the mental health and social support services needed to influence behaviors that result from or contribute to family violence may be greater than initially estimated. Family violence treatment and preventive interventions that focus on single incidents and short periods of support services, especially in such areas as parenting skills, mental health, and batterer treatment, may be inadequate to deal with problems that are pervasive, multiple, and chronic. Many programs for victims involve short-term treatment services—less than 6 weeks. Services for offenders are also typically of short duration. Yet research suggests that short-term programs designed to alter violent behavior are often the least likely to succeed, because of the difficulties of changing behavior that has persisted for a period of years and has become part of an established pattern in relationships. Efforts to address fundamental sources of conflict, stress, and violence that occur repeatedly over time within the family environment may require extensive periods of support services to sustain the positive effects achieved in short-term interventions.
• The interactive nature of family violence interventions constitutes a major challenge to the evaluation of interventions because the presence or absence of policies and programs in one domain may directly affect the implementation and outcomes of interventions in another. Research suggests that the risk and protective factors for child maltreatment, domestic violence, and elder abuse interact across multiple levels. The uncoordinated but interactive system of services requires further attention and consideration in future evaluation studies. Such evaluations need to document the presence and absence of services that affect members of the same family unit but offer treatment for specific problems in separate institutions characterized by different service philosophies and resources.
• For example, factors such as court oversight or mandatory referrals may influence individual participation in treatment services and the outcomes associated with such participation. The culture and resources of one agency can influence the quality and timing of services offered by another. Yet little information is available regarding the extent or quality of interventions in a community. Clients who receive multiple interventions (especially children) are often not followed through different service settings. Limited information is available to distinguish key features of innovative interventions from those usually offered in a community; to describe the stages of implementation of specific family violence programs, interventions, or strategies; to explain rates of attrition in the client base; or to capture case characteristics that influence the ways in which clients are selected for specific treatment programs.
• The emergence of secondary prevention interventions specifically targeted to serve children, adults, and communities with characteristics that are
• thought to place them at greater risk of family violence than the general population, along with the increasing emphasis on the need for integration and coordination of services, has the potential to achieve significant benefits. However, the potential of these newer interventions to reduce the need for treatment or other support services over the lifetime of the client has not yet been proven for large populations.
• Secondary preventive interventions, such as those serving children exposed to domestic violence, have the potential to reduce future incidents of family violence and to reduce the existing need for services in such areas as recovery from trauma, substance abuse, juvenile crime, mental health and health care. However, evaluation studies are not yet available to determine the value of preventive interventions for large populations in terms of reduction of the need for treatment or other support services over a client's lifetime.
• The shortage of service resources and the emphasis on reactive, short-term treatment have directed comparatively little attention to interventions for people who have experienced or perpetrated violent behavior but who have not yet been reported or identified as offenders or victims. Efforts to achieve broader systemic collaboration, comprehensive service integration, and proactive interventions require attention to the appropriate balance among enforcement, treatment, and prevention interventions in addressing family violence at both state and national levels. Such efforts also need to be responsive to the particular requirements of diverse ethnic communities with special needs or unique resources that can be mobilized in the development of preventive interventions. Because they extend to a larger population than those currently served by treatment centers, secondary prevention efforts can be expensive; their benefits may not become apparent until many years after the intervention occurs.
• Policy leadership is needed to help integrate family violence treatment, enforcement and support actions, and preventive interventions and also to foster the development of evaluations of comprehensive and cross-problem interventions that have the capacity to consider outcomes beyond reports of future violent behavior.
• Creative research methodologies are also needed to examine the separate and combined effects of cross-problem service strategies (such as the treatment of substance abuse and family violence), follow individuals and families through multiple service interventions and agency settings, and examine factors that may play important mediating roles in determining whether violence will occur or continue (such as the use of social networks and support services and the threat of legal sanctions).
• Most evaluations seek to document whether violent behavior decreased as a result of the intervention, an approach that often inhibits attention to other factors that may play important mediating roles in determining whether violence will occur. The individual victim or offender is the focus of most interventions and
• the unit of analysis in evaluation studies, rather than the family or the community in which the violence occurred.

Integrated approaches have the potential to illuminate the sequences and ways in which different experiences with violence in the family do and do not overlap with each other and with other kinds of violence. This research approach requires time to mature; at present, it is not strong enough to determine the strengths or limitations of strategies that integrate different forms of family violence compared with approaches that focus on specific forms of family violence. Service integration efforts focused on single forms of family violence may have the potential to achieve greater impact than services that disregard the interactive nature of this complex behavior, but this hypothesis also remains unproven.

Recommendations For Current Policies And Practices

It is premature to offer policy recommendations for most family violence interventions in the absence of a research base that consists of well-designed evaluations. However, the committee has identified two areas (home visitation and family preservation services) in which a rigorous set of studies offers important guidance to policy makers and service providers. In four other areas (reporting practices, batterer treatment programs, record keeping, and collaborative law enforcement approaches) the committee has drawn on its judgment and deliberations to encourage policy makers and service providers to take actions that are consistent with the state of the current research base.

These six interventions were selected for particular attention because (1) they are the focus of current policy attention, service evaluation, and program design; (2) a sufficient length of time has elapsed since the introduction of the intervention to allow for appropriate experience with key program components and measurement of outcomes; (3) the intervention has been widely adopted or is under consideration by a large number of communities to warrant its careful analysis; and (4) the intervention has been described and characterized in the research literature (through program summaries or case studies).

Reporting Practices

All 50 states have adopted laws requiring health professionals and other service providers to report suspected child abuse and neglect. Although state laws vary in terms of the types of endangerment and evidentiary standards that warrant a report to child protection authorities, each state has adopted a procedure that requires designated professionals—or, in some states, all adults—to file a report if they believe that a child is a victim of abuse or neglect. Mandatory reporting is thought to enhance early case detection and to increase the likelihood that services will be provided to children in need.

For domestic violence, mandatory reporting requirements for professional groups like health care providers have been adopted by the state of California and are under consideration in several other states. Mandatory reports are seen as a method by which offenders who abuse multiple partners can be identified through the health care community for law enforcement purposes. Early detection is assumed to lead to remedies and interventions that will prevent further abuse by holding the abuser accountable and helping to mitigate the consequences of family violence.

Critics have argued that mandatory reporting requirements may damage the confidentiality of the therapeutic relationship between health professionals and their clients, disregard the knowledge and preferences of the victim regarding appropriate action, potentially increase the danger to victims when sufficient protection and support are not available, and ultimately discourage individuals who wish to seek physical or psychological treatment from contacting and disclosing abuse to health professionals. In many regions, victim support services are not available or the case requires extensive legal documentation to justify treatment for victims, offenders, and families.

For elder abuse, 42 states have mandatory reporting systems. Several states have opted for voluntary systems after conducting studies that considered the advantages and disadvantages of voluntary and mandatory reporting systems, on the grounds that mandatory reports do not achieve significant increases in the detection of elder abuse cases.

In reviewing the research base associated with the relationship between reporting systems and the treatment and prevention of family violence, the committee has observed that no existing evaluation studies can demonstrate the value of mandatory reporting systems compared with voluntary reporting procedures in addressing child maltreatment or domestic violence. For elder abuse, studies suggest that a high level of public and professional awareness and the availability of comprehensive services to identify, treat, and prevent violence is preferable to reporting requirements in improving rates of case detection.

The absence of a research base to support mandatory reporting systems raises questions as to whether they should be recommended for all areas of family violence. The impact of mandatory reporting systems in the area of child maltreatment and elder abuse remains unexamined. The committee therefore suggests that it is important for the states to proceed cautiously at this time and to delay adopting a mandatory reporting system in the area of domestic violence, until the positive and negative impacts of such a system have been rigorously examined in states in which domestic violence reports are now required by law.

Recommendation 1: The committee recommends that states initiate evaluations of their current reporting laws addressing family violence to examine whether and how early case detection leads to improved outcomes for the victims or families and promote changes based on sound research. In

particular, the committee recommends that states refrain from enacting mandatory reporting laws for domestic violence until such systems have been tested and evaluated by research.

In dealing with family violence that involves adults, federal and state government agencies should reconsider the nature and role of compulsory reporting policies. In the committee's view, mandatory reporting systems have some disadvantages in cases involving domestic violence, especially if the victim objects to such reports, if comprehensive community protections and services are not available, and if the victim is able to gain access to therapeutic treatment or support services in the absence of a reporting system.

The dependent status of young children and some elders provides a stronger argument in favor of retaining mandatory reporting requirements where they do exist. However, the effectiveness of reporting requirements depends on the availability of resources and service personnel who can investigate reports and refer cases for appropriate treatment, as well as clear guidelines for processing reports and determining which cases qualify for services. Greater discretion may be advised when the child and family are able to receive therapeutic treatment from health care or other service providers and when community resources are not available to respond appropriately to their cases. The treatment of adolescents especially requires major consideration of the pros and cons of mandatory reporting requirements. Adolescent victims are still in a vulnerable stage of development: they may or may not have the capacity to make informed decisions regarding the extent to which they wish to invoke legal protections in dealing with incidents of family violence in their homes.

Batterer Treatment Programs

Four key questions characterize current policy and research discussions about the efficacy of batterer treatment, one of the most challenging problems in the design of family violence interventions: Is treatment preferable to incarceration, supervised probation, or other forms of court oversight for batterers? Does participation in treatment change offenders' attitudes and behavior and reduce recidivism? Does the effectiveness of treatment depend on its intensity, duration, or the voluntary or compulsory nature of the program? Is treatment what creates change, or is change in behavior reduced by multiple interventions, such as arrest, court monitoring of client participation in treatment services, and victim support services?

Descriptive research studies suggest that there are multiple profiles of batterers, and therefore one generic approach is not appropriate for all offenders. Treatment programs may be helpful in changing abusive behavior when they are part of an overall strategy designed to recognize and reduce violence in a relationship, when the batterer is prepared to learn how to control aggressive impulses, and

when the treatment plan emphasizes victim safety and provides for frequent interactions with treatment staff.

Research on the effectiveness of treatment programs suggests that the majority of subjects who complete court-ordered treatment programs do learn basic cognitive and behavioral principles taught in their course. However, such learning requires appropriate program content and client participation in the program for a sufficient time to complete the necessary training. Very few studies have examined matched groups of violent offenders who are assigned to treatment and control groups or comparison groups (such as incarceration or work-release). As a result, the comparative efficacy of treatment is unknown in reducing future violence. Differing client populations and differing forms of court oversight are particularly problematic factors that inhibit the design of rigorous evaluation studies in this field.

The absence of strong theory and common measures to guide the development of family violence treatment regimens, the heterogeneity of offenders (including patterns of offending and readiness to change) who are the subjects of protective orders or treatment, and low rates of attendance, completion, and enforcement are persistent problems that affect both the evaluation of the interventions and efforts to reduce the violence. A few studies suggest that court oversight does appear to increase completion rates, which have been linked to enhanced victim safety in the area of domestic violence, but increased completion rates have not yet led to a discernible effect on recidivism rates in general.

Further evaluations are needed to examine the outcomes associated with different approaches and programmatic themes (such as cognitive-behavioral principles: issues of power, control, and gender; personal accountability). Completion rates have been used as an interim outcome to measure the success of batterer treatment programs; further studies are needed to determine if completers can be identified readily, if program completion by itself is a critical factor in reducing recidivism, and if participation in a treatment program changes the nature, timing, and severity of future violent behavior.

The current research base is inadequate to identify the conditions under which mandated referrals to batterer treatment programs offer a clear advantage over incarceration or untreated probation supervision in reducing recidivism for the general population of male offenders. Court officials should monitor closely the attendance, participation, and completion rates of offenders who are referred to batterer treatment programs in lieu of more punitive sentences. Treatment staff should inform law enforcement officials of any significant behavior by the offender that might represent a threat to the victim. Mandated treatment referrals may be effective for certain types of batterers, especially if they increase completion rates. The research is inconclusive, however, as to which types of individuals should be referred for treatment rather than more punitive sanctions. In selecting individuals for treatment, attention should be given to client history

(first-time offenders are more likely to benefit), motivation for treatment, and likelihood of completion.

Mandated treatment referrals for batterers do appear to provide benefits to victims, such as intensive surveillance of offenders, an interlude to allow planning for safety and victim support, and greater community awareness of the batterer's behavior. These outcomes may interact to deter and reduce domestic violence in the community, even if a treatment program does not alter the behavior of a particular batterer. Treatment programs that include frequent interactions between staff and victims also provide a means by which staff can help educate victims about danger signals and support them in efforts to obtain greater protection and legal safeguards, if necessary.

Recommendation 2: In the absence of research that demonstrates that a specific model of treatment can reduce violent behavior for many domestic violence offenders, courts need to put in place early warning systems to detect failure to comply with or complete treatment and signs of new abuse or retaliation against victims, as well as to address unintended or inadvertent results that may arise from the referral to or experience with treatment.

Further research evaluation studies are needed to review the outcomes for both offenders and victims associated with program content and levels of intensity in different treatment models. This research will help indicate whether treatment really helps and what mix of services are more helpful than others. Improved research may also help distinguish those victims and offenders for whom particular treatments are most beneficial.

Record Keeping

Since experience with family violence appears to be associated with a wide range of health problems and social service needs, service providers are recognizing the importance of documenting abuse histories in their client case records. The documentation in health and social service records of abuse histories that are self-reported by victims and offenders can help service providers and researchers to determine if appropriate referrals and services have been made and the outcomes associated with their use. The exchange of case records among service providers is essential to the development of comprehensive treatment programs, continuity of care, and appropriate follow-up for individuals and families who appear in a variety of service settings. Such exchanges can help establish greater accountability by service systems for responding to the needs of identifiable victims and offenders; health and social service records can also provide appropriate evidence for legal actions, in both civil and criminal courts and child custody cases.

Research evaluations of service interventions often require the use of anonymous case records. The documentation of family violence in such records will

enhance efforts to improve the quality of evaluations and to understand more about patterns of behavior associated with violent behaviors and victimization experiences. Although documentation of abuse histories can improve evaluations and lead to integrated service responses, such procedures require safeguards so that individuals are not stigmatized or denied therapeutic services on the basis of their case histories. Insurance discrimination, in particular, which may preclude health care coverage if abuse is judged to be a preexisting condition, requires attention to ensure that professional services are not diminished as a result of voluntary disclosures. Creative strategies are needed to support integrated service system reviews of medical, legal, and social service case records in order to enhance the quality and accountability of service responses. Such reviews will need to meet the expectations of privacy and confidentiality of both individual victims and the community, especially in cases in which maltreatment reports are subsequently regarded as unfounded.

Documentation of abuse histories that are voluntarily disclosed by victims or offenders to health care professionals and social service providers must be distinguished from screening efforts designed to trigger such disclosures. The committee recommends screening as a strong candidate for future evaluation studies (see discussion in the next section).

Recommendation 3: The committee recommends that health and social service providers develop safeguards to strengthen their documentation of abuse and histories of family violence in both individual and group records, regardless of whether the abuse is reported to authorities.

The documentation of histories of family violence in health records should be designed to record voluntary disclosures by both victims and offenders and to enhance early and coordinated interventions that can provide a therapeutic response to experiences with abuse or neglect. Safeguards are required, however, to ensure that such documentation does not lead to stigmatization, encourage discriminatory practices, or violate assurances of privacy and confidentiality, especially when individual histories become part of patient group records for health care providers and employers.

Collaborative Law Enforcement Strategies

In the committee's view, collaborative law enforcement strategies that create a web of social control for offenders are an idea worth testing to determine if such efforts can achieve a significant deterrent effect in addressing domestic violence. Collaborative strategies include such efforts as victim support and offender tracking systems designed to increase the likelihood that domestic violence cases will be prosecuted when an arrest has been made, that sanctions and treatment services will be imposed when evidence exists to confirm the charges brought against the offender, and that penalties will be invoked for failure to comply with treatment

conditions. The attraction of collaborative strategies is based on their potential ability to establish multiple interactions with offenders across a large domain of interactions that reinforce social standards in the community and establish penalties for violations of those standards. Creating the deterrent effect, however, requires extensive coordination and reciprocity between victim support and offender monitoring efforts involving diverse sectors of the law enforcement community. These efforts may be difficult to implement and evaluate. Further studies are needed to determine the extent to which improved collaboration among police officers, prosecutors, and judges will lead to improved coordination and stronger sanctions for offenders and a reduction in domestic violence.

The absence of empirical research findings of the results of a collaborative law enforcement approach in addressing domestic violence makes it difficult to compare the costs and benefits of increased agency coordination with those achieved by a single law enforcement strategy (such as arrest) in dealing with different populations of offenders and victims. Even though relatively few cases of arrest are made for any form of family violence, arrest is the most common and most studied form of law enforcement intervention in this area. Research studies conducted in the 1980s on arrest policies in domestic violence cases are the strongest experimental evaluations to date of the role of deterrence in family violence interventions. These experiments indicate that arrest may be effective for some, but not most, batterers in reducing subsequent violence by the offender. Some research studies suggest that arrest may be a deterrent for employed and married individuals (those who have a stake in social conformity) and may lead to an escalation of violence among those who do not, but this observation has not been tested in studies that could specifically examine the impact of arrest in groups that differ in social and economic status. The differing effects (in terms of a reduction of future violence) of arrest for employed/unemployed and married/unmarried individuals raise difficult questions about the reliance of law enforcement officers on arrest as the sole or central component of their response to domestic violence incidents in communities where domestic violence cases are not routinely prosecuted, where sanctions are not imposed by the courts, or where victim support programs are not readily available.

The implementation of proarrest policies and practices that would discriminate according to the risk status of specific groups is challenged by requirements for equal protection under the law. Law enforcement officials cannot tailor arrest policies to the marital or employment status of the suspect or other characteristics that may interact with deterrence efforts. Specialized training efforts may help alleviate the tendency of police officers to arrest both suspect and victim, however, and may alert law enforcement personnel to the need to review both criminal and civil records in determining whether an arrest is advisable in response to a domestic violence case.

Two additional observations merit consideration in examining the deterrent effects of arrest. First, in the research studies conducted thus far, the implementation

of legal sanctions was minimal. Most offenders in the replication studies were not prosecuted once arrested, and limited legal sanctions were imposed on those cases that did receive a hearing. Some researchers concluded that stronger evidence of effectiveness might be obtained from proarrest policies if they are implemented as part of a law enforcement strategy that expands the use of punitive sanctions for offenders—including conviction, sentencing, and intensive supervised probation.

Second is the issue of reciprocity between formal sanctions against the offender and informal support actions for the victims of domestic violence. The effects of proarrest policies may depend on the extent to which victims have access to shelter services and other forms of support, demonstrating the interactive dimensions of community interventions. A mandatory arrest policy, by itself, may be an insufficient deterrent strategy for domestic violence, but its effectiveness may be enhanced by other interventions that represent coordinated law enforcement efforts to deter domestic violence—including the use of protective orders, victim advocates, and special prosecution units. Coordinated efforts may help reduce or prevent domestic violence if they represent a collaborative strategy among police, prosecutors, and judges that improves the certainty of the use of sanctions against batterers.

Recommendation 4: Collaborative strategies among caseworkers, police, prosecutors, and judges are recommended as law enforcement interventions that have the potential to improve the batterer's compliance with treatment as well as the certainty of the use of sanctions in addressing domestic violence.

The impact of single interventions (such as mandatory arrest policies) is difficult to discern in the research literature. Such practices by themselves can neither be recommended nor rejected as effective measures in addressing domestic violence on the basis of existing research studies.

Home Visitation and Family Support Services

Home visitation and family support programs constitute one of the most promising areas of child maltreatment prevention. Studies in this area have experimented with different levels of treatment intensity, duration, and staff expertise. For home visitation, the findings generally support the principle that early intervention with mothers who are at risk of child maltreatment makes a difference in child outcomes. Such interventions may be difficult to implement and maintain over time, however, and their effectiveness depends on the willingness of the parents to participate. Selection criteria for home visitation should be based on a combination of social setting and individual risk factors.

In their current form, home visitation programs have multiple goals, only one of which is the prevention of child abuse and neglect. Home visitation and family

support programs have traditionally been designed to improve parent-child relations with regard to family functioning, child health and safety, nutrition and hygiene, and parenting practices. American home visiting programs are derived from the British system, which relies on public health nurses and is offered on a universal basis to all parents with young children. Resource constraints, however, have produced a broad array of variations in this model; most programs in the United States are now directed toward at-risk families who have been reported to social services or health agencies because of prenatal health risks or risks for child maltreatment. Comprehensive programs provide a variety of services, including in-home parent education and prenatal and early infant health care, screening, referral to and, in some cases, transportation to social and health services. Positive effects include improved childrearing practices, increased social supports, utilization of community services, higher birthweights, and longer gestation periods.

Researchers have identified improvements in cognitive and parenting skills and knowledge as evidence of reduced risk for child maltreatment; they have also documented lower rates of reported child maltreatment and number of visits to emergency services for home-visited families. The benefits of home visitation appear most promising for young, first-time mothers who delay additional pregnancies and thus reduce the social and financial stresses that burden households with large numbers of young children. Other benefits include improved child care for infants and toddlers and an increase in knowledge about the availability of community services for older children. The intervention has not been demonstrated to have benefits for children whose parents abuse drugs or alcohol or those who are not prepared to engage in help-seeking behaviors. The extent to which home visitation benefits families with older children, or families who are already involved in abusive or neglectful behaviors, remains uncertain.

Recommendation 5: As part of a comprehensive prevention strategy for child maltreatment, the committee recommends that home visitation programs should be particularly encouraged for first-time parents living in social settings with high rates of child maltreatment reports.

The positive impact of well-designed home visitation interventions has been demonstrated in several evaluation studies that focus on the role of mothers in child health, development, and discipline. The committee recommends their use in a strategy designed to prevent child maltreatment. Home visitation programs do require additional evaluation research, however, to determine the factors that may influence their effectiveness. Such factors include (1) the conditions under which home visitation should be provided as part of a continuum of family support programs, (2) the types of parenting behaviors that are most and least amenable to change as a result of home visitation, (3) the duration and intensity of services (including amounts and types of training for home visitors) that are necessary to achieve positive outcomes for high-risk families, (4) the experience

of fathers in general and of families in diverse ethnic communities in particular with home visitation interventions, and (5) the need for follow-up services once the period of home visitation has ended.

Intensive Family Preservation Services

Intensive family preservation services represent crisis-oriented, short-term, intensive case management and family support programs that have been introduced in various communities to improve family functioning and to prevent the removal of children from the home. The overall goal of the intervention is to provide flexible forms of family support to assist with the resolution of circumstances that stimulated the child placement proposal, thus keeping the family intact and reducing foster care placements.

Eight of ten evaluation studies of selected intensive family preservation service programs (including five randomized trials and five quasi-experimental studies) suggest that, although these services may delay child placement for families in the short term, they do not show an ability to resolve the underlying family dysfunction that precipitated the crisis or to improve child well-being or family functioning in most families. However, the evaluations have shortcomings, such as poorly defined assessment of child placement risk, inadequate descriptions of the interventions provided, and nonblinded determination of the assignment of clients to treatment and control groups.

Intensive family preservation services may provide important benefits to the child, family, and community in the form of emergency assistance, improved family functioning, better housing and environmental conditions, and increased collaboration among discrete service systems. Intensive family preservation services may also result in child endangerment, however, when a child remains in a family environment that threatens the health or physical safety of the child or other family members.

Recommendation 6: Intensive family preservation services represent an important part of the continuum of family support services, but they should not be required in every situation in which a child is recommended for out-of-home placement.

Measures of health, safety, and well-being should be included in evaluations of intensive family preservation services to determine their impact on children's outcomes as well as placement rates and levels of family functioning, including evidence of recurrence of abuse of the child or other family members. There is a need for enhanced screening instruments that can identify the families who are most likely to benefit from intensive short-term services focused on the resolution of crises that affect family stability and functioning.

The value of appropriate post-reunification (or placement) services to the child and family to enhance coping and the ability to make a successful transition

toward long-term adjustment also remains uncertain. The impact of post-reunification or post-placement services needs to be considered in terms of their relative effects on child and family functioning compared with the use of intensive family preservation services prior to child removal. In some situations, one or the other type of services might be recommended; in other cases, they might be used in some combination to achieve positive outcomes.

Recommendations For The Next Generation Of Evaluations

Determining which interventions should be selected for rigorous and in-depth evaluations in the future will acquire increased importance as the array of family violence interventions expands in social services, law, and health care settings. For this reason, clear criteria and guiding principles are necessary to guide sponsoring agencies in their efforts to determine which types of interventions are suitable for evaluation research. Recognizing that all promising interventions cannot be evaluated, public and private agencies need to consider how to invest research resources in areas that show programmatic potential as well as an adequate research foundation. Future allocations of research investments may require agencies to reorganize or to develop new programmatic and research units that can inform the process of selecting interventions for future evaluation efforts, determine the scope of adequate funding levels, and identify areas in which program integration or diversity may contribute to a knowledge base that can inform policy, practice, and research. Such agencies may also consider how to sustain an ongoing dialogue among research sponsors, research scientists, and service providers to inform these selection efforts and to disseminate evaluation results once they are available.

In the interim, the committee offers several guiding principles to help inform the evaluation selection process.

• meet the preconditions for experimentation that are described in the other principles outlined below.

With these principles in mind, the committee has identified a set of interventions that are the focus of current policy attention and service innovation efforts but have not received significant attention from research. In the committee's judgment, each of these nine interventions has reached a level of maturation and preliminary description in the research literature to justify their selection as strong candidates for future evaluation studies.

Training for Service Providers and Law Enforcement Officials

Training in basic educational programs and continuing education on all aspects

of family violence has expanded for professionals in the health care, legal, and social service systems. Such efforts can be expected to enhance skills in identifying individual experiences with family violence, but improvements in training may improve other outcomes as well, including the patterns and timing of service interventions, the nature of interactions with victims of family violence, linkage of service referrals, the quality of investigation and documentation for reported cases, and, ultimately, improved health and safety outcomes for victims and communities.

Training programs alone may be insufficient to change professional behavior and service interventions unless they are accompanied by financial and human resources that emphasize the role of psychosocial issues and support the delivery of appropriate treatment, prevention, and referral services in different institutional and community settings. Evaluations of their effectiveness therefore need to consider the institutional culture and resource base that influence the implementation of the training program and the abilities of service providers to apply their knowledge and skills in meeting the needs of their clients.

Evaluation research is needed to assess the impact of training programs on counseling and referral practices and service delivery in health care, social service, and law enforcement settings. This research should include examination of the effects of training on the health and mental health status of those who receive services, including short- and long-term outcomes such as empowerment, freedom from violence, recovery from trauma, and rebuilding of life. Evaluations should also examine the role of training programs as catalysts for innovative and collaborative services. They should consider the extent to which training programs influence the behavior of agency personnel, including the interaction of service providers with professionals from other institutional settings, their participation in comprehensive community service programs, and the exposure of personal experiences in institutions charged with providing interventions for abuse.

Universal Screening in Health Care Settings

The significant role of health care and social service professionals in screening for victimization by all forms of family violence deserves critical analysis and rigorous evaluation. Early detection of child maltreatment, spousal violence, and elder abuse is believed to lead to an infusion of treatment and preventive services that can reduce exposure to harm, mitigate the negative consequences of abuse and neglect, improve health outcomes, and reduce the need for future health services. Screening programs can also enhance primary prevention efforts by providing information, education, and awareness of resources in the community. The benefits associated with early detection need to be balanced against risks presented by false positives and false negatives associated with large-scale screening efforts and programs characterized by inadequate staff training and responses.

Such efforts also need to consider whether appropriate treatment, protection, and support services are available for victims or offenders once they have been detected.

The use of enhanced screening instruments also requires attention to the need for services that can respond effectively to the large caseloads generated by expanded detection activities. The child protective services literature suggests that increased reporting can diminish the capacity of agencies to respond effectively if additional resources are not available to support enhanced services as well as screening.

The use of screening instruments in health care and social service settings for batterer identification and treatment is more problematic, given the lack of knowledge about factors that enhance or discourage their violent behavior. Screening only victims may be insufficient to provide a full picture of family violence; however, screening batterers may increase the danger for their victims, especially if batterer treatment interventions are not available or are not reliable in providing effective treatment and if support services are not available for victims once a perpetrator is identified. Screening adults for histories of childhood abuse, which may help prevent future victimization of the patient or others, may also be problematic without adequate training or mental health services to deal with the possible resurgence of trauma.

Evaluation studies of family violence screening efforts could build on the lessons derived from screening research in other health care areas (such as HIV detection, lead exposure, sickle cell, and others). This research could provide data that would support or contradict the theory that early identification is a useful secondary prevention intervention, especially in areas in which appropriate services may not be available or reliable. The cost issues associated with universal screening need to be considered in terms of their implications for savings in possible cost reductions from consequent conditions (such as the health consequences of HIV infection, sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and the exacerbation of other medical conditions) that may occur in other health care areas. Finally, the risks associated with screening (such as the establishment of a preexisting condition that may influence insurance eligibility) require consideration; such issues are already being addressed by some advocacy groups, insurance corporations, and regulatory bodies in the health care area.

Mental Health and Counseling Services

Little is known at present regarding the comparative effectiveness of different forms of therapeutic services for victims of family violence. Findings from recent studies of child physical and sexual abuse suggest that certain approaches (specifically cognitive-behavioral programs) are associated with more positive outcomes for parents, such as reducing aggressive/coercive behavior, compared

with family therapy and routine community mental health services. No treatment outcome studies have been conducted in the area of child neglect. Interventions in this field generally draw on approaches for dealing with other childhood and adolescent problems with similar symptom profiles.

For domestic violence, research evaluations are in the early stages of design and empirical data are not yet available to guide analyses of the effectiveness of different approaches. Major challenges include the absence of agreement regarding key psychosocial outcomes of interest in assessing the effectiveness of interventions, variations in the use of treatment protocols designed for post-traumatic stress for individuals who may still be experiencing traumatic situations, tensions between protocol-driven models of treatment (which are easier to evaluate) and those that are driven by the needs of the client or the context in which the violence occurred, the co-occurrence of trauma and other problems (such as prior victimization, depression, substance abuse, and anxiety disorders) that may have preceded the violence but require mental health services, and the difficulty of involving victims in follow-up studies after the completion of treatment. Variations in the context in which mental health services are provided for victims of domestic violence (such as isolated services, managed care programs, and services that are incorporated into an array of social support programs, including housing and job counseling) also require attention. Topics of special interest include contextual issues, such as the general lack of access to quality mental health services for women without sufficient independent income, and the danger of psychiatric diagnoses being used against battered women in child custody cases.

Collaborative efforts are needed to provide opportunities for the exchange of methodology, research measures, and designs to foster the development of controlled studies that can compare the results of innovative treatment approaches with routine counseling programs in community services.

Comprehensive Community Initiatives

Evaluations of batterer treatment programs, protective orders, and arrest policies suggest that the role of these individual interventions may be enhanced if they are part of a broad-based strategy to address family violence. The development of comprehensive, community-based interventions has become extremely widespread in the 1990s; examples include domestic violence coordinating councils, child advocacy centers, and elder abuse task forces. A few communities (most notably Duluth, Minnesota, and Quincy, Massachusetts) have developed systemwide strategies to coordinate their law enforcement and other service responses to domestic violence.

Comprehensive community-based interventions must confront difficult challenges, both in the design and implementation of such services, and in the selection of appropriate measures to assess their effectiveness. Many evaluations of comprehensive community-based interventions have focused primarily on the

design and implementation process, to determine whether an individual program had incorporated sufficient range and diversity among formal and informal networks so that it can achieve a significant impact in the community. This type of process evaluation does not necessarily require new methods of assessment or analysis, although it can benefit from recent developments in the evaluation literature, such as the empowerment evaluations discussed in Chapter 3 .

In contrast, the evaluation challenges that emerge from large-scale community-based efforts are formidable. First, it may be difficult to determine when an intervention has reached an appropriate stage of implementation to warrant a rigorous assessment of its effects. Second, the implementation of a community-wide intervention may be accompanied by a widespread social movement against family violence, so that it becomes difficult to distinguish the effects of the intervention itself from the impact of changing cultural and social norms that influence behavior. In some cases, the effects attributed to the intervention may appear weak, because they are overwhelmed by the impact of the social movement itself. Third, the selection of an appropriate comparison or control group for community-wide interventions presents formidable problems in terms of matching social and structural characteristics and compensating for community-to-community variation in record keeping.

These challenges require close attention to the emerging knowledge associated with the evaluation of comprehensive community-wide interventions in areas unrelated to family violence, so that important design, theory, and measurement insights can be applied to the special needs of programs focused on child maltreatment, domestic violence, and elder abuse. Although no single model of service integration, comprehensive services, or community change can be endorsed at this time, a range of interesting community service designs has emerged that have achieved widespread popularity and support at the local level. Because their primary focus is often on prevention, rather than treatment, comprehensive community interventions have the potential to achieve change across multiple levels of interactions affecting individuals, families, communities, and social norms and thus reduce the scope and severity of family violence as well as contribute to remedies to other important social problems.

A growing research literature has appeared in other fields, particularly in the area of substance abuse and community development, that identifies the conceptual frameworks, data collection, and methodological issues that need to be considered in designing evaluation studies for community-based and systemwide interventions. As an example, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention in the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has funded a series of studies designed to improve methodologies for the evaluation of community-based substance abuse prevention programs that offer important building blocks for the field of family violence interventions.

Developing effective evaluation strategies for comprehensive and systemwide programs is one of the most challenging issues for the research community

in this field. No evaluations have been conducted to date to examine the relative advantages of comprehensive and systemwide community initiatives compared with traditional services. Evaluations need to consider the mix of components in comprehensive interventions that determine their effectiveness and successful implementation; the comparative strengths and limitations of inter- and intra-agency interventions; community factors, such as political leadership, historical tensions, diversity of ethnic/cultural composition, and resource allocation strategies; and the impact of comprehensive interventions on the capacity of service agencies to provide traditional care and effective responses to reports of family violence.

Shelter Programs and Other Domestic Violence Services

Over time, most battered women's shelters have expanded their services to encompass far more than the provision of refuge. Today, many shelters have support groups for women residents, support groups for child residents, emergency and transitional housing, and legal and welfare advocacy. Nonresidential services also have expanded, so that any battered woman in the community is able to attend a support group or request advocacy services. Many agencies now offer educational groups for men who batter, as well as programs dealing with dating violence. Some communities have never opened a shelter yet are able to offer support groups, advocacy, crisis intervention, and safe homes (neighbors sheltering a neighbor, for example) to help battered women and their families in times of crisis. In addition to providing services for victims, the battered women service organizations also define their goal as transforming the conditions and norms that support violence against women. Thus these organizations work as agents of social change in their communities to improve the community-wide response to battered women and their children.

Shelter services and battered women's support organizations are ready for evaluations that can identify program outcomes and compare the effectiveness of different service interventions. Research studies are also needed that can describe the multiple goals and theories that shape the program objectives of these interventions, provide detailed histories of the ways in which different service systems have been implemented, and examine the characteristics of the women who do or do not use or benefit from them.

Protective Orders

Protective orders can be an important part of the prevention strategy for domestic violence and help document the record of assaults and threatening actions. The low priority traditionally assigned to the handling of protective orders, which are usually treated as civil matters in police agencies, requires attention, as do the procedural requirements of the legal system. Courts have

accepted alternative forms of due process, including public notice, notice by mail, and other forms of notification that do not require personal contact. Efforts are needed now to compare the effectiveness of short-term (30-day) restraining orders with a longer (1-year) protective order in reducing violent behavior by offenders and securing access to legal and support services for the complainants.

In-depth case studies and interviews with victims who have had police and court contacts because of domestic violence are needed to highlight individual, social, and institutional factors that facilitate or inhibit victim use of and perpetrator compliance with protective orders in different community settings. Such studies could (1) reveal patterns of help-seeking contacts and services that affect the use of protective orders and compliance with their requirements, (2) highlight the forms of sanctions that are appropriate to ensure compliance and to deter future violent behavior, (3) explore the extent to which the effects of protective orders are enhanced in reducing violence if victim advocates, shelter services, or other social support resources are available and are used by the victim in redefining the terms of her relationship with her partner, and (4) examine the extent to which protective orders can mitigate the consequences of violence for children who may have been assaulted or who may have witnessed an assault against their mother.

Child Fatality Review Panels

The emergence of child fatality review teams in 21 states since 1978 represents an innovative effort in many communities to address systemwide implications of severe violence against children and infants. Child fatality review teams involve a multiagency effort to compile and integrate information about child deaths and to review and evaluate the record of caseworkers and agencies in providing services to these children when a report of abuse or neglect had been made prior to a child's death. These review teams can provide an opportunity to examine the quality of a community's total approach to child abuse and neglect prevention and treatment.

The experience of child fatality review teams in identifying systemic features that enhance or weaken agency efforts to protect children needs to be evaluated and made accessible to individual service providers in health, legal, and social service agencies. Key research issues include: the effect of review team actions on the protection of family members of children who have died as a result of child maltreatment; the impact of child fatality review reports on the prosecution of offenders; the influence of review team efforts on the routine investigation, treatment, and prevention activities of participating agencies; the impact of review teams on other community child protection and domestic violence prevention efforts; and the identification of early warning signals that emerge in child homicide investigations that represent opportunities for preventive interventions.

Child Witness to Violence Programs

Child witness programs represent an important development in the evolution of comprehensive approaches to family violence, but they have not yet been evaluated. Evaluation studies of these programs should examine the experience with symptomatology among children who witness family violence, to determine whether and for whom early intervention influences the course of development of social and mental health consequences, such as depression, anxiety, emotional detachment, aggression and violence, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Such studies could also compare variations in the developmental histories of children who witness violence with those of children who are injured or otherwise are directly victimized by their parents or who witness violence in their communities. Evaluation studies should consider the recommended forms of treatment for these children, the standards of eligibility that determine their placement in treatment programs, and the impact of institutional setting (hospital, shelter, or social service agency) and reimbursement plans on the quality of the treatment.

Elder Abuse Services

Only seven program evaluation studies have been published on elder abuse interventions, none of which includes random groups and most of which involve small sample sizes. Three major issues challenge effective interventions in this area: the degree of dependence between perpetrators and victims, restricted social services budgets, general public distrust of social welfare programs, and the relationship between judgments about competence and the application of the principles of self-determination and privacy to the problem of elder abuse.

Evaluation studies should consider the different types and multiple dimensions of elder abuse in the development of effective interventions. The benefits of specific programs need to be compared with integrated service systems that are designed to foster the well-being of the elderly population without regard to special circumstances. Evaluation research should be integrated into community service programs and agency efforts on behalf of elderly persons to foster studies that involve the use of comparison and control groups, common measures, and the assessment of outcomes associated with different forms of service interventions.

Topics For Basic Research

The committee identified four basic research topics that require further development to inform policy and practice. These topics raise fundamental questions about the approaches that should be used in designing treatment, prevention, and enforcement strategies. As such, they highlight important dimensions of family violence that should be addressed in a research agenda for the field.

birth, infancy, and adolescence. Other issues linked to family formation include the use of corporal punishment in child discipline, gender roles, privacy, and strategies for resolving conflict among adults or siblings.

A third approach would be studies to discern the protective factors inside and outside families that enable some children who are exposed to violence to not only survive but also to develop coping mechanisms that serve them well later in life. This analysis would have widespread implications for assessing the impact of biological and experiential factors in specific domains, such as fear, anxiety, self-blame, identity formation, helplessness, and help-seeking behaviors. Such research could also identify abuse-related coping strategies (such as excessive distrust of or overdependence on others) that may contribute to other problems that emerge in the course of adolescent and adult development.

first-time parents, victims and offenders who have substance abuse histories, etc.)

Forging Partnerships Between Research And Practice

Although it is premature to expect research to offer definitive answers about the relative effectiveness of the array of current service and enforcement strategies, the committee sees valuable opportunities that now exist to accelerate the rate by which service providers can identify the types of individuals, families, and communities that may benefit from certain types or combinations of service and enforcement interventions. Major challenges must be addressed, however, to improve the overall quality of the evaluations of family violence interventions and to provide a research base that can inform policy and practice. These challenges include issues of study design and methodology as well as logistical concerns that must be resolved in order to conduct research in open service systems where the research investigator is not able to control factors that may weaken the study design and influence its outcome. The resolution of these challenges will require collaborative partnerships between researchers, service providers, and policy makers to generate common approaches and data sources.

The integration of research and practice in the field of family violence, as in many other areas of human services, has occurred on a haphazard basis. As a result, program sponsors, service providers, clients, victims, researchers, and community representatives have not been able to learn in a systematic manner from the diverse experiences of both large and small programs. Mayors, judges, police officers, caseworkers, child and victim advocates, health professionals, and others must make life-or-death decisions each day in the face of tremendous

uncertainty, often relying on conflicting reports, anecdotal data, and inconsistent information in judging the effectiveness of specific interventions.

The development of creative partnerships between the research and practice communities would greatly improve the targeting of limited resources to specific clients who can benefit most from a particular type of intervention. Yet significant barriers inhibit the development of such partnerships, including disagreements about the nature and origins of family violence, broad variations in the conceptual frameworks that guide service delivery, differences over the relative merits of service and research, a lack of faith in the ability of research to inform and improve services, a lack of trust in the ability of service providers to inform the design of research experiments and the formation of theoretical frameworks, and concerns about fairness and safety in including victims and offenders in experimental treatment groups. These fundamental differences obscure identification of outcomes of interest in the development of evaluation studies, which are further complicated by limitations in study design and access to appropriate subjects that are necessary for the conduct of research.

Even if greater levels of trust fostered more interaction between the research community and service providers, collaborative efforts would be challenged by factors such as the lack of funding for empirical studies, the availability of limited resources to support studies over appropriate time frames, and the social and economic characteristics of some of the populations served by family violence interventions that make them difficult to follow over extended periods of time (chaotic households, high mobility of the client population, concerns for safety, lack of telephones and permanent residences, etc.).

Service providers and program sponsors have often been skeptical of efforts to evaluate the impact of a selected intervention, knowing that critical or premature assessments could jeopardize the program's future and restrict future opportunities for service delivery. Service providers have also been less than enthusiastic in seeking program evaluations, knowing that the programs to be evaluated have been underfunded and are understaffed and present a less than ideal situation; in their view, the assessment may diminish future resources and affect the development of a particular strategy or programmatic approach. The tremendous demand for services and the limited availability of staff resources create a pressured environment in which the staff time involved in filling out forms for research purposes is seen as being sacrificed from time that might be used to serve people in need. In some cases, research funds support demonstration programs that are highly valued by a community, yet few resources are available to support them once the research phase has been completed.

Researchers and service providers need to resolve the programmatic tensions that have sometimes surfaced in contentious debates over the type of services that should be put into place in addressing problems of family violence. The mistrust and skepticism present major challenges that need to resolved before the technical challenges to effective evaluations can be addressed. A reformulation of the

research process is needed so that, while building a long-term capacity to focus on complex issues and conduct rigorous studies, researchers can also provide useful information to service providers.

The committee has identified three major principles to help integrate research and practice in the field of family violence interventions:

• Evaluation should be an integral part of any major intervention, particularly those that are designed to be replicated in multiple communities. Interventions have often been put into place without a research base to support them or rigorous evaluation efforts to guide their development. Evaluation research based on theoretical models is needed to link program goals and operational objectives with multiple program components and outcomes. Intensive marketing and praise for a particular intervention or program should no longer be a substitute for empirical data in determining the effectiveness of programs that are intended to be replicated in multiple sites.
• Coordinating policy, program, and research agendas will improve family violence interventions. Evaluation research will help program sponsors and managers clarify program goals and experience and identify areas in need of attention because of the difficulties of implementation, the use of resources, and changes in the client base. Research and data-based analysis can guide ongoing program and policy efforts if evaluation studies are integrated into the design and development of interventions. The knowledge base can be improved by (1) framing key hypotheses that can be tested by existing or new services, (2) building statistical models to explore the system-wide effects of selected interventions and compare these effects with the consequences of collaborative and comprehensive approaches, (3) using common definitions and measures to facilitate comparisons across individual studies, (4) using appropriate comparison and control groups in evaluation studies, including random assignment, when possible, (5) developing culturally sensitive research designs and measures, (6) identifying relevant outcomes in the assessment of selected interventions, and (7) developing alternative designs when traditional design methodology cannot be used for legal, ethical, or practical reasons.
• Surmounting existing barriers to collaboration between research and practice communities requires policy incentives and leadership to foster partnership efforts. Many interventions are not evaluated because of limited funds, because the individuals involved in service delivery consider research to be peripheral to the needs of their clients, because the researchers are disinterested in studying the complexity of service delivery systems and the impact of violence in clients' lives, or because research methods are not yet available to assess outcomes that result from the complex interaction of multiple systems. This situation will continue until program sponsors and policy officials exercise leadership to build partnerships between the research and practice communities and to provide funds for rigorous evaluations in the development of service and law enforcement
• interventions. Additional steps are required to foster a more constructive dialogue and partnership between the research and practice communities.

Partnership efforts are also needed to focus research attention on the particular implementation of an individual program rather than the strategy behind the program design. Promising intervention strategies may be discarded prematurely because of special circumstances that obstructed full implementation of the program. Conversely, programs that offer only limited effectiveness may appear to be successful on the basis of evaluation studies that did not consider the significant points of vulnerability and limitations in the service design or offer a comparative analysis with the benefits to be derived from routine services.

The establishment and documentation of a series of consensus conferences on relevant outcomes, and appropriate measurement tools, will strengthen and enhance evaluations of family violence interventions and lead to improvements in the design of programs, interventions, and strategies. May opportunities currently exist for research to inform the design and assessment of treatment and prevention interventions. In addition, service providers can help guide researchers in the identification of appropriate domains in which program effects may occur but are currently not being examined. Ongoing dialogues can guide the identification and development of instruments and methods that can capture the density and distribution of relevant effects that are not well understood. The organization of a series of consensus conferences by sponsors in public and private agencies that are concerned with the future quality of family violence interventions would be an important contribution to the development of this field.

Reports of mistreated children, domestic violence, and abuse of elderly persons continue to strain the capacity of police, courts, social services agencies, and medical centers. At the same time, myriad treatment and prevention programs are providing services to victims and offenders. Although limited research knowledge exists regarding the effectiveness of these programs, such information is often scattered, inaccessible, and difficult to obtain.

Violence in Families takes the first hard look at the successes and failures of family violence interventions. It offers recommendations to guide services, programs, policy, and research on victim support and assistance, treatments and penalties for offenders, and law enforcement. Included is an analysis of more than 100 evaluation studies on the outcomes of different kinds of programs and services.

Violence in Families provides the most comprehensive review on the topic to date. It explores the scope and complexity of family violence, including identification of the multiple types of victims and offenders, who require different approaches to intervention. The book outlines new strategies that offer promising approaches for service providers and researchers and for improving the evaluation of prevention and treatment services. Violence in Families discusses issues that underlie all types of family violence, such as the tension between family support and the protection of children, risk factors that contribute to violent behavior in families, and the balance between family privacy and community interventions.

The core of the book is a research-based review of interventions used in three institutional sectors—social services, health, and law enforcement settings—and how to measure their effectiveness in combating maltreatment of children, domestic violence, and abuse of the elderly. Among the questions explored by the committee: Does the child protective services system work? Does the threat of arrest deter batterers? The volume discusses the strength of the evidence and highlights emerging links among interventions in different institutional settings.

Thorough, readable, and well organized, Violence in Families synthesizes what is known and outlines what needs to be discovered. This volume will be of great interest to policymakers, social services providers, health care professionals, police and court officials, victim advocates, researchers, and concerned individuals.

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The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation (2012) and Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women (1996) and editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working toward Freedom (with Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Jill Petty, et al., 2018).

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Beth E. Richie; The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies. Daedalus 2022; 151 (1): 84–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01890

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In this essay, I illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, public policy analyses, and the most conscientious popular discourse on the impact of violence point to the deleterious effects that violence has on both individual health and safety and community well-being. Comprehensive justice policy research on topics ranging from gun violence to intimate abuse support the premise that the physical injury, psychological distress, and fear that are typically associated with individual victimization are directly linked to subsequent social isolation, economic instability, erosion of neighborhood networks, group alienation, and mistrust of justice and other institutions. This literature also points to the ways that structural inequality, persistent disadvantages, and structural abandonment are some of the root causes of microlevel violent interactions and at the same time influence how effective macro-level justice policies are at responding to or preventing violent victimization. 1

The most exciting of these analyses have emerged from the subfields of feminist criminology, critical race theory, critical criminology, sociolegal theory, and other social science research that take seriously questions of race and culture, gender and sexuality, ethnic identity and class position, exploring with great interest how these factors influence the prevailing questions upon which practitioners in our field base their practice; questions such as how to increase access to justice, the role of punishment in desistance, the factors that lead to a disproportionate impact of institutional practices, and the perceptions about, and possibilities for, violence prevention and abolitionist practices. 2 Discussions about the future of justice policy would be well served by attending to this growing literature and the critical frameworks that are advanced from within it.

In this essay, I will attempt to illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Following a review of the data on violent victimization against African American women, I describe the violence matrix , a conceptual framework that I developed from analyzing data from several research projects on the topic. 3 I do so as a way to make concrete my earlier claim: that the effect of violence on communities must be understood from a critical intersectional framework. That is, my central argument here is an epistemological one, suggesting that in the future, the most effective and indeed “just” policies in response to violence necessitate the development of critical far-reaching systemic analysis and social change at multiple levels.

Violent victimization has been established as a major problem in contemporary society, resulting in long-term physical, social, emotional, and economic consequences for people of different racial/ethnic, class, religious, regional, and age groups and identities. 4 However, like most social problems, the impact is not equally felt across all subgroups, and even though the rates may be similar, the consequences of violent victimization follow other patterns of social inequality and disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minority groups. 5 When impact and consequences are taken into account, it becomes clear that African American women fare among the worst, in part because of the ways that individual experiences are impacted by negative institutional processes. 6

While qualitative data suggest that there is a link between social position in a racial hierarchy and Black women's subsequent vulnerability to violence, the specific mechanism of that relationship has yet to be described or tested. 7 However, despite new research that examines the effects of race/ethnicity and gender in combination, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of the intersection of race and gender with a specific focus on the situational factors, cultural dynamics, and neighborhood variables that lead to higher rates and/or more problematic outcomes of violent victimization in the lives of African American women. 8

These unanswered questions led to the years of fieldwork that informed the development of the violence matrix. I was interested in broadening the understanding of violence by analyzing the contextual and situational factors that correlate with multiple forms of violent victimization for African American women, incorporating the racial and community dynamics that influence their experiences. I was also concerned about the ways that state-sanctioned violence and systemic oppression contributed to the experience and impact of intimate partner abuse and looked for a way to incorporate “ordinary violence” and “the injustices of everyday life” into an analytic model. I offer this conceptual approach as a potential epistemological model because it proposes to enhance the scientific understanding of violent victimization of African American women by looking at gender and race, micro and macro, individual, community, and societal issues in the same analysis, whereas in most other research, rates of victimization are described either by gender or race, and typically not from within the contexts of household, neighborhood, and society.

More specifically, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence typically understood to be associated with household or familiar relationships are usually studied as a separate phenomenon constituting a gender violence subfield distinct from other forms of victimization that are captured in more general crime statistics. 9 The more general research that documents crimes of assault, homicide, and so on does not typically isolate analyses of the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, even if it is noted. As a result, gender violence and other forms of violent victimization against women are studied separately, and their causes and consequences, the intervention and prevention strategies, and the needs for policy change are not linked analytically to each other. This leaves unexamined the significant influence of situational factors (such as intimacy) or contextual factors (such as negative images of African American women) on victimization, and on violence more generally.

Prior to describing the violence matrix, readers may benefit from a brief overview of the problems that it was designed to account for. African American women experience disproportionate impacts of violent victimization. 10 As the following review of the literature shows, the rates are high and the consequences are severe, firmly establishing the need to focus on this vulnerable group. The goal is not to suggest it is the only population group at risk or that racial/ethnic identity has a causal influence on victimization, but rather to look specifically at how race/ethnicity and gender interact to create significant disproportionality in rates of, perceptions about, and consequences of violence, and to develop an instrument to collect data that can be analyzed conceptually and discussed in terms of contextual particularities.

Assault . According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005, Black women reported experiencing violent victimization at a rate of 25 per 1,000 persons aged twelve years or older. 11 In an earlier report, Black women reported experiencing simple assaults at 28.8 per 1,000 persons and serious violent crimes at 22.5 per 1,000 persons, twelve years or older. Black women are also more likely (53 percent) to report violent victimization to the police than their White or male counterparts. 12 Situational factors such as income, urban versus suburban residence, perception of street gang membership, and presence of a weapon influence Black women's violent victimization. Other variables are known to complicate this disproportionality, most notably income, age, neighborhood density, and other crimes in the community like gang-related events. However, few studies note or analyze their covariance. Additionally, reports after 2007 detail statistics on violent victimization for race or gender, but not race and gender; therefore, numbers regarding Black women's experiences are largely unknown.

Intimate partner violence . Intimate partner violence is a significant and persistent social problem with serious consequences for individual women, their families, and society as a whole. 13 The 1996 National Violence Against Women Survey suggested that 1.5 million women in the United States were physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year, while other studies provide much higher estimates. 14 For example, the Department of Justice estimates that 5.3 million incidents of violence against a current or former spouse or girlfriend occur annually. Estimates of violence against women in same sex partnerships indicate a similar rate of victimization. 15

According to most national studies, African American women are disproportionately represented in the data on physical violence against intimate partners. 16 In the Violence Against Women Survey, 25 percent of Black women had experienced abuse from their intimate partner, including “physical violence, sexual violence, threats of violence, economic exploitation, confinement and isolation from social activities, stalking, property destruction, burglary, theft, and homicide.” Rates of severe battering help to spotlight the disproportionate impact of direct physical assaults on Black women by intimate partners: homicide by an intimate partner is the second-leading cause of death for Black women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. 17 Black women are killed by a spouse at a rate twice that of White women. However, when the intimate partner is a boyfriend or girlfriend, this statistic increases to four times the rate of their White counterparts. 18 While the numbers are convincing, they are typically not embedded in an understanding of how situational factors like relationship history, religiosity, or availability of services impact these rates. 19

Sexual victimization . When race is considered a variable in some community samples, 7 to 30 percent of all Black women report having been raped as adults, and 14 percent report sexual abuse during their childhood. 20 This unusually wide range results from differences in definitions and sampling methods. However, as is true in most research on sexual victimization, it is widely accepted that rape, when self-reported, is underreported, and that Black women tend to underutilize crisis intervention and other supportive services that collect data. 21 Even though Black women from all segments of the African American community experience sexual violence, the pattern of vulnerability to rape and sexual assault mirrors that of direct physical assault by intimate partners. The data show that Black women from low-income communities, those with substance abuse problems or mental health concerns, and those in otherwise compromised social positions are most vulnerable to sexual violence from their intimate partners. 22 Not only is the incidence of rape higher, but a review of the qualitative research on Black women's experiences of rape also suggests that Black women are assaulted in more brutal and degrading ways than other women. 23 Weapons or objects are more often used, so Black women's injuries are typically worse than those of other groups of women. Black women are more likely to be raped repeatedly and to experience assaults that involve multiple perpetrators. 24

Beyond the physical, and sometimes lethal, consequences, the psychological literature documents the very serious mental health impact of sexual assault by intimate partners. For instance, 31 percent of all rape victims develop rape-related post-traumatic stress disorder. 25 Rape victims are three times more likely than nonvictims to experience a major depressive episode in their lives, and they attempt suicide at a rate thirteen times higher than nonvictims. Women who have been raped by a member of their household are ten times more likely to abuse illegal substances or alcohol than women who have not been raped. Black women experience the trauma of sexual abuse and aggression from their intimate partners in particular ways, as studies conducted by psychologists Victoria Banyard, Sandra Graham-Bermann, Carolyn West, and others have discussed. 26 It is also important to note the extent to which Black women are exposed to or coerced into participating in sexually exploitative intimate relationships with older men and men who violate commitments of fidelity by having multiple sexual partners. 27 Far from infrequent or benign, it can be hypothesized that these experiences serve to socialize young women into relationships characterized by unequal power, and they normalize subservient gender roles for women, although very little empirical research has been done to make this analytical case.

Community harassment . In addition to direct physical and sexual assaults, Black women experience a disproportionate number of unwanted comments, uninvited physical advances, and undesired exposure to pornography in their communities. Almost 75 percent of Black women sampled report some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime, including being forced to live in, work in, attend school in, and even worship in degrading, dangerous, and hostile environments, where the threat of rape, public humiliation, and embarrassment is a defining aspect of their social environment. 28 They also experience trauma as a result of witnessing violence in their communities. 29

For some women, this sexual harassment escalates to rape. Even when it does not, community harassment creates an environment of fear, apprehension, shame, and anxiety that can be linked to women's vulnerability to violent victimization. It is important to understand this link because herein lie some of the most significant situational and contextual factors, like the diminished use of support services and reduced social capital on the part of African American women.

Social disenfranchisement . Less well-documented or quantified in the criminological data is the disproportionate harm caused to African American women because of the ways that violent victimization is linked to social disenfranchisement and the discrimination they face in the social sphere. Included here is what other researchers have called coercive control or structural violence. 30 The notion of social disenfranchisement goes beyond emotional abuse and psychological manipulation to include the regulation of emotional and social life in the private sphere in ways that are consistent with normative values about gender, race, and class. 31 These aspects of violence against African American women in particular are conceptualized in the violence matrix, and include being disrespected by microracial slurs from community members and agency officials, and having their experience of violent victimization denied by community leaders. 32 African American women are also disproportionately likely to be poor, rely on public services like welfare, and be under the control of state institutions like prisons, which means that they face discrimination and degradation in these settings at higher rates. 33 These situational and contextual factors that cause harm are indirectly related to violent victimization and must be considered part of the environment that disadvantages African American women. From this vantage point, it could be argued that when women experience disadvantages associated with racial and ethnic discrimination, dangerous and degrading situations, and social disenfranchisement, they are more at risk of victimization. 34

The violence matrix ( Table 1 ) is informed by the data reviewed above and by my interest in bringing a critical feminist criminological approach to the understanding of violent victimization of African American women. It asserts that intimate partner violence is worsened by some of the contextual variables and situational dynamics in their households, communities, and broader social sphere, and vice versa. The tool is not intended to infer causation, but rather to broaden the understanding of the factors that influence violence in order to create justice policy in the future.

The Violence Matrix

The violence matrix conceptualizes the forms of violent victimization that women experience as fitting into three overlapping categories, reflecting a sense that the forms are co-constituted and exist within a larger context and in multiple arenas: 35 1) direct physical assault against women; 2) sexual aggressions that range from harassment to rape; and 3) the emotional and structural dimensions of social disenfranchisement that characterize the lives of some African American women and leave them vulnerable to abuse. Embedded in the discussion of social disenfranchisement are issues related to social inequality, systemic abuse, and state violence.

Consistent with ecological models of other social problems, the violence matrix shows that various forms of violent victimization happen in several contexts and are influenced by several variables. 36 First, violence occurs within households, including abuse from intimate partners as well as other family members and co-residents. Dynamics associated with household composition, relationship history, and patterns of household functioning can be isolated for consideration in this context. The second sphere is the community in which women live: the neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and public spaces where women routinely interact with peers and other people. This context has both a geographic and a cultural meaning. Community, in this context, is where women share a sense of belonging and physical space. An analysis of the community context focuses attention on issues like neighborhood social class, degree of social cohesion, and presence or absence of social services. The third is the social sphere, where legal processes, institutional policies, ineffective justice policies, and the nature of social conditions (such as population density, neighborhood disorder, patterns of incarceration, and other macrovariables) create conditions that cause harm to women and other victims of violence. 37 The harm caused by victimization in this context happens either through passive victimization (as in the case of bystanders not responding to calls for help because of the low priority put on women's safety) or active aggression (as in police use of excessive force in certain neighborhoods) that create structural disadvantage. 38

The analytic advantage of using a tool like the violence matrix to explain violent victimization is that it offers a way to move beyond statistical analyses of disproportionality to focus on a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between contextual factors that disadvantage African American women and the situational variables leading to violent victimization. Two important features of this conceptual framework allow for this. First, the violence matrix theoretical model considers both the forms and the contexts as dialectical and reinforcing (as opposed to discrete) categories of experience. Boundaries overlap, relationships shift over time, and situations change. It helps to show how gender violence and other forms of violent victimization intersect and reinforce each other. For example, sexual abuse has a physical component, community members move in and become intimate partners, and sexual harassment is sometimes a part of how institutions respond to victims. This theoretical model examines the simultaneity of forms and contexts, a feature that most paradigms do not have. 39 The possibility that gender violence (like marital rape) could be correlated with violence at the community level (like assault by a neighbor) holds important potential for a deeper understanding of violent victimization of vulnerable groups and therefore informs the future of justice policy.

A second distinguishing feature of this conceptual model is that it broadens the discussion about violent victimization beyond direct assaults within the household (Table 1, cells 1 and 2) and sexual assaults by acquaintances and strangers (cells 5 and 8), which are the focus of the majority of the research on violence against women. It includes social disenfranchisement as a form of violence and social sphere as a context (cells 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9). In this way, the violence matrix focuses specific attention on contextual and situational vulnerabilities in addition to the physical ones. More generally, this advantages research and justice praxis. This approach responds to the entrenched problem of gender violence as it relates to issues of structural racism and other forms of systematic advantage. Models like this therefore hold the potential to inform justice policy that is more comprehensive, more effective, and, ultimately, more “just.”

My hope is that the violence matrix will deepen the understanding of the specific problem of violence in the lives of Black women and serve as a model for intersectional analyses of other groups and their experiences of violence. I hope it points to the utility of moving beyond quantitative studies and single-dimension qualitative analyses of the impact of violence and instead encourages designing conceptual models that consider root causes and the ways that systemic factors complicate its impact. This would offer an opportunity for a deeper discussion around violence policy, one that would include attention to individual harm, and how it is created by, reinforced by, or worsened by structural forms of violence. It would bring neighborhood dynamics into the analytical framework and engage issues of improving community efficacy and reversing structural abandonment in considerations of potential options. Questions about where strategies of community development and how the politics of prison abolition might appear would become relevant. And in the end, it would advance critical justice frameworks that answer questions about what 1) we might invest in to keep individuals safe; 2) how we might help neighborhoods thrive; and 3) how we might create structural changes that shift power in our society such that violence and victimization are minimized. More than rhetorical questions and naively optimistic strategies, these are real issues that must inform any discussion of the future of justice policy. A model like the violence matrix, modified and improved upon by discussions at convenings like those hosted by the Square One Project, offer some insights into both the what and the how of future justice policy. I hope that this essay is helpful in moving that discussion forward.

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Buttell and Carney, “A Large Sample Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program”; Shannan Catalano, Erica Smith, Howard Snyder, and Michael Rand, “Female Victims of Violence” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009); Michelle D. Mitchell, Gabrielle Hargrove, Marietta H. Collins, and Martie P. Thompson, “Coping Variables that Mediate the Relation between Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health Outcomes among Low-Income, African American Women,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 62 (12) (2006): 1503–1520; and Shondrah Tarrezz Nash, “Through Black Eyes: African American Women's Constructions of their Experiences with Intimate Male Partner Violence,” Violence Against Women 11 (11) (2005): 1420–1440.

Janette Y. Taylor, “No Resting Place: African American Women at the Crossroads of Violence,” Violence Against Women 11 (12) (2005): 1473–1489; Nikki Jones, Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010); and Jody Miller, Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

Carole E. Jordon, “Advancing the Study of Violence against Women: Evolving Research Agendas into Science,” Violence Against Women 15 (4) (2009): 393–419.

Buttell and Carney, “A Large Sample Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program.”

Harrell, “Black Victims of Violent Crime.”

Callie Rennison, “Violent Victimization and Race, 1993–98” (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).

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Tjaden and Thoennes, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence against Women .

Kim Fountain and Avy A. Skolnik, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Domestic Violence in the United States in 2006: A Report of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program (New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2007), https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2006_NCAVP_DV_Report.pdf; Valli Kanuha, “Compounding the Triple Jeopardy: Violence in Lesbian Relationships,” Women and Therapy 9 (2) (1990): 169–184; and Diane R. Dolan-Soto and Sara Kaplan, New York Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Bisexual Domestic Violence Report (New York: New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, 2005), http://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2005_AVP_DV_Report.pdf .

Emiko Petrosky, Janet M. Blair, Carter J. Betz, et al., “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence–United States, 2003–2014,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 66 (28) (2017): 741–746.

Taft et al., “Intimate Partner Violence against African American Women.”

Catalano et al., “Female Victims of Violence.”

Tricia B. Bent-Goodley, “Perception of Domestic Violence: A Dialogue with African American Women,” Health and Social Work 29 (4) (2004): 307–316; Blanca Ramos, Bonnid E. Carlson, and Louise-Ann McNutt, “Life-Time Abuse, Mental Health and African American Women,” Journal of Family Violence 19 (3) (2004): 153–164; Christina G. Watlington and Christopher M. Murphy, “The Role of Religion and Spirituality among African American Survivors of Domestic Violence,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 62 (7) (2006): 837–857; and Carolyn West, “Black Women and Intimate Partner Violence: New Directions for Research,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 19 (12) (2004): 1487–1493.

Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2006).

Helen A. Neville and Jennifer Hamer, “'We Make Freedom': An Exploration of Revolutionary Black Feminism,” Journal of Black Studies 31 (4) (2001): 437–461.

Christina A. Byrne and David S. Riggs, “Gender Issues in Couple and Family Therapy Following Traumatic Stress,” in Gender and PTSD , ed. Rachel Kimerling, Paige Ouimette, and Jessica Wolfe (New York: The Guilford Press, 2002), 382–399; Jacquelyn Campbell, “Health Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence,” The Lancet 359 (9314) (2002): 1331–1336; Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, “Unlocking Options for Women: A Survey of Women in Cook County Jail” (Chicago: Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, 2002), https://www.issuelab.org/resources/46/46.pdf ; Cheryl Sutherland, Chris Sullivan, and Deborah Bybee, “Effects of Intimate Partner Violence versus Poverty on Women's Health,” Violence Against Women 7 (10) (2001): 1122–1143; and Tjaden and Thoennes, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence against Women .

Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer, “Race and Trends in Pornography Viewership, 1973–2016: Examining the Moderating Roles of Gender and Religion,” Journal of Sex Research 56 (1) (2019): 62–73; Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998); and G. Erlick Robinson, “International Perspectives on Violence against Women,” Archives on Women's Mental Health 6 (3) (2003).

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Jordon, “Advancing the Study of Violence against Women.”

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Essay on Family Violence

Students are often asked to write an essay on Family Violence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Family Violence

What is family violence.

Family violence is when a family member hurts another. This can be hitting, yelling, or forcing someone to do things they don’t want to. It’s not just between adults; kids can be hurt too.

Types of Family Violence

There are different kinds of harm in families. Physical harm is when someone is hit or injured. Emotional harm is when feelings are hurt by mean words. There’s also neglect, which is not taking care of someone’s needs.

Why It Happens

Family violence can start because of stress, drinking, or drug use. Sometimes, people who were hurt as children might hurt their own families. It’s a cycle that’s hard to break.

Effects on Children

Kids who see or experience violence can have trouble in school and with friends. They might feel sad or scared all the time. It’s important to help them feel safe and loved.

Getting Help

It’s okay to tell someone if there’s violence at home. Talking to a teacher, friend, or calling a helpline can start the process of making things better for everyone.

250 Words Essay on Family Violence

Family violence is when someone in a family hurts another family member on purpose. It can be hitting, yelling, or even not taking care of someone when they need it. This is a big problem that can happen in any family, no matter where they live or how much money they have.

There are different ways people can be violent in families. Physical violence is when someone is hurt by being hit or touched in a mean way. Emotional violence is when someone is hurt by words, like being called names or made to feel small. There is also neglect, which is when a family member does not give the care that is needed, like food, love, or help.

Children who see or face violence in their families can feel very scared and alone. They might have trouble in school or get sick more often. Sometimes, they carry these bad feelings into their adult lives.

It is important to know that people who are facing family violence can get help. There are phone numbers to call and places to go where they can be safe. Talking to a trusted adult, like a teacher or family friend, can be a good first step.

Working Together

Everyone should work together to stop family violence. This means being kind, learning about the signs of violence, and helping those who need it. By doing this, we can make families safer and happier places.

500 Words Essay on Family Violence

Family violence is when someone uses power in a bad way to hurt someone else in the family. It can happen in any family, no matter where they live or how much money they have. This kind of harm is not just hitting or punching; it can also be when someone says mean things, threatens, or tries to control another person in the family.

There are different ways family violence can show itself. Physical violence is when someone causes pain or injury to another person’s body. Emotional violence is when someone hurts another’s feelings, making them feel bad or scared. Then there’s sexual violence, which is forcing someone to do sexual things when they don’t want to. Lastly, neglect is a type of violence too. This is when a family member, like a child, is not given what they need to live, like food, a safe place to sleep, or love.

Why Does Family Violence Happen?

Family violence can start for many reasons. Sometimes, people who hurt their family members have been hurt themselves before. They might not know how to deal with their own pain, so they take it out on others. Stress from things like not having enough money or jobs can make family violence worse. Also, some people think they have the right to control others, which can lead to violence.

Effects of Family Violence

Family violence can leave deep marks, not just on the body, but also in the mind. Kids who see or experience violence in the family might have trouble at school, feel very sad or angry, or have a hard time trusting others. Adults can suffer too, feeling scared, alone, or confused. In the long run, family violence can make it difficult for people to have healthy relationships.

Getting Help and Stopping Violence

Stopping family violence is very important. If someone is being hurt, it’s okay to talk to a trusted adult, like a teacher or family friend. There are also special places called shelters where families can stay safe. Calling the police is sometimes needed if someone is in immediate danger.

It’s also important to learn about respect and kindness in families. Talking about feelings, listening to each other, and solving problems without violence are skills that can help prevent family violence.

Family violence is a serious problem that can hurt everyone in the family. It can take many forms, like physical, emotional, sexual abuse, or neglect. There are many reasons why it happens, but it’s never okay. The effects can be very harmful, especially for children. But there is hope. By learning about family violence and how to get help, people can work together to stop the hurt and live in peace. Remember, everyone deserves to feel safe and loved in their family.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Family Values
• Essay on Family Trip
• Essay on Business Ethics And Social Responsibility

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Essays About Violence: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Violence is a broad topic and can be sensitive for many; read our guide for help writing essays about violence.

The world has grown considerably more chaotic in recent decades, and with chaos comes violence. We have heard countless stories of police brutality, mass shootings, and injustices carried out by governments; these repeating occurrences show that the world is only becoming more violent.

Violence refers to the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy . From punching a friend due to disagreement to a massacre of innocent civilians, a broad range of actions can be considered violent. Many say that violence is intrinsic to humanity, but others promote peace and believe that we must do better to improve society.

If you are writing essays about violence, go over the essay example, and writing prompts featured below. 

Are you looking for more? Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

1. Videogames, Violence, and Vulgarity by Jared Lovins

2. street culture, schools, and the risk of youth violence by lorine hughes, ekaterina botchkovar, olena antonaccio, and anastasiia timmer, 3. violence in media: no problem or promotes violence in society by albert miles, 4. my experience of domestic violence by ruth stewart, 5. a few thoughts about violence by jason schmidt, writing prompts on essays about violence, 1. what is violence, 2. different types of violence, 3. can social media cause people to be violent, 4. is violence truly intrinsic to humankind, 5. causes of violence, 6. violence among the youth, 7. race-based violence.

“Parents allow themselves to be ignorant of the video games their children are playing. Players allow themselves to act recklessly when they believe that playing video games for ten, twenty, or even thirty hours on end won’t have an adverse effect on their mental and physical health. People allow themselves to act foolishly by blaming video games for much of the violence in the world when in truth they should be blaming themselves.”

Lovins discusses the widespread belief that video games cause violence and ” corrupt our society.” There is conflicting evidence on this issue; some studies prove this statement, while others show that playing violent video games may produce a calming effect. Lovins concludes that it is not the games themselves that make people violent; instead, some people’s mental health issues allow the games to inspire them to commit violence.

“The risk of violence was not higher (or lower) in schools with more pervasive street culture values. Higher concentrations of street culture values within schools did not increase the likelihood of violence above and beyond the effects of the street culture values of individual students. Our results also showed that attending schools with more pervasive street culture values did not magnify the risk of violence among individual students who had internalized these same values.”

In this essay, the authors discuss the results of their study regarding “street culture” and violence. Street culture promotes toughness and dominance by using “physical force and aggression,” so one would think that students who embrace street culture would be more violent; however, the research reveals that there is no higher risk of violent behavior in schools with more “street culture”-following students. 

“We have had a violent society before media was even around, and violence is just in our nature as human beings. Those who happen to stand against this are deceived by society, due to the fact that we live in a dangerous world, which will stay this way due to the inability to create proper reasoning.”

Miles writes about people blaming the media for violence in society. He believes that government media regulations, including age-based ratings, are sufficient. If these restrictions and guidelines are taken seriously, there should be no problem with violence. Miles also states that violence has existed as long as humankind has, so it is unreasonable to blame the media. 

“It was when I was in the bath, and I looked down at my body and there were no bruises on it. None at all. I was shocked; it was the first time I had lived in a non-bruised body in many years. I don’t know if any other women who got out of violent situations felt their moment. The point at which they realised it was over, they could now get on with recovering. I promised myself that I would never stay with a violent partner ever, ever again. I have kept that promise to myself.”

Stewart reflects on her time with an ex-boyfriend who was violent towards her. Even though he kept hitting her, she stayed because she was used to it; her mother and stepfather were both violent during her childhood. Thankfully, she decided to leave and freed herself from the torture. She promises never to get into a similar situation and gives tips on avoiding staying with a violent partner. 

“I went back and replayed the burglar scenario in my head. Suppose I’d had a gun. When would I have pulled it? When he ran out of the apartment? What were the chances I would have killed him in a panic, without ever knowing he was armed? Stupidly high. And for what? Because he tried to steal someone’s TV? No.”

In his essay, Schmidt recalls an instance in which a man pulled a gun on him, threatening him with violence. He chased a burglar down the street, but the burglar pulled a gun on him, leaving him stunned and confused enough to escape. Schmidt was so bothered by the incident that he got his own concealed carry permit; however, after reading statistics regarding gun accidents, he decided to reject violence outright and pursue peace. 

As stated previously, violence is quite a broad topic, so it can be challenging to understand fully. Define the word violence and briefly overview some of its probable causes, how it manifests itself, and its effects. You can also include statistics related to violence and your own opinions on if violence is a good or bad thing. 

There are many types of violence, such as domestic violence, gun violence, and war. List down the commonly occurring forms of violence and explain each of them briefly. How are they connected, if they are? To keep your essay exciting and readable, do not go too in-depth; you can reserve a more detailed discussion for future essays that are specifically about one type of violence.  

Social media is quite explicit and can show viewers almost anything, including violent content. Some sample essays above discuss the media’s effect on violence; based on this, is social media any different? Research this connection, if it exists, and decide whether social media can cause violence. Can social media-based pressure lead to violence? Answer this question in your essay citing data and interview research.

Many argue that humans are innately violent, and each of us has an “inner beast.” In your essay, discuss what makes people violent and whether you believe we have tendencies towards violence. Be sure to support your points with ample evidence; there are many sources you can find online. 

Violence arises from many common problems, whether it be depression, poverty, or greed. Discuss one or more causes of violence and how they are interconnected. Explain how these factors arise and how they manifest violence. With an understanding of the causes of violence, your essay can also propose solutions to help prevent future violence.

Youth violence is becoming a more severe problem. News of school shootings in the U.S. has set public discourse aflame, saying that more should be done to prevent them. For your essay, give a background of youth violence in the U.S. and focus on school shootings. What motivates these school shooters?  Give examples of children whose upbringing led them to commit violent acts in the future

Another issue in the U.S. today is race-based violence, most notably police brutality against African-Americans. Is there a race issue in policing in America? Or do they target offenders regardless of race? Can both be true at the same time? You decide, and make sure to explain your argument in detail. 

If you’d like to learn more, in this guide our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay .Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Family Violence in History and Nowadays Essay

Interests in learning about family violence, how history has contributed to violence in the family today.

I am interested in family violence because I want to be a police officer. Daily through the media, we are bombarded with information in relation to family violence in its different forms. I am interested in learning more about family violence due to the desire to understand the factors that contribute to high cases of domestic violence. I think the information in this course will be important in helping me to understand the various issues with regard to domestic violence. Examples of family violence are sexual harassment and rape, psychological assault perpetrated by both men and women. It has been shown that cultures of different communities support many types of violent acts (Majau, 2014).

The patriarchal power system is not embodied in the biological males, but it is a social construction (Gosselin, 2014).Therefore, the long history of male domination is insightful in determining whether this cultural subordination of women to men provides the reason for the existence of the inequalities that exist between the sexes and also establishes the effect of globalization of this topic.

The information is necessitated by the fact that this family violence is usually not reported, or even when reported, the perpetrators go scot-free (Majau, 2014). There are fewer legislation and policies to curb family violent acts (Gosselin, 2014). The other inherent aspect of this topic is how this culture has been interred in the women that they are not only the perennial victims, but they are also perpetrators of this vice by silently hiding their sufferings or by psychologically taunting other women.

Thus, family violence can largely be attributed to the underrepresentation of women at home and other major decision-making institutions such as religious institutions and learning institutions (Majau, 2014). This becomes a barrier for women to attain power and change the oppressive traditions. In fact, efforts have to be focused on empowering women in different communities.

Gosselin, D. K. (2014). Heavy hands: An introduction to the crimes of family violence , (5 th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Majau, U. (2014). Perspectives to sex discrimination: male and female chauvinism . Web.

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The Effects of Domestic Violence: Family & Society

How it works

Unspoken, destructive, and hidden from the outside world. Domestic violence. In grade school it is rarely talked about. October is Domestic Violence awareness month, yet no one said a word. In order to prevent this, we must first understand it. What is domestic violence? It is a pattern of controlling and manipulating behavior that is meant to subdue and take all the power in a relationship. Intimate partner violence is a more specific type of domestic violence, it is any abuse in the family by a romantic partner, this can include physical, psychological, financial, or sexual.

More often than not it is physical. And even more often than that, the children are involved as well. Domestic violence is destructive to anyone in its path, however, it is the children that suffer the most. Their childhood and innocence is stripped at a young age and all they know is pain and violence because it is all they have ever seen in the most developmental stages of their lives. Childhood exposure to domestic violence has various negative effects on the child’s behavior, mental health, school performance, and future relationships. There are several theories as to why violence in the family occurs. The feminist theory is based on the patriarchal society whereas women are often objectified and seen as property to men. Violence occurs to keep the men in power and to keep the wife to stay in their domesticated place. Of course any gender can fall victim, however, the feminist theory seems to explain a large number of cases.

To begin with, even though the violence is primarily between the parents, the children observe, listen, and suffer the most. Childhood exposure to domestic violence occurs when children see, hear, or are directly involved such as attempting to intervene or being a victim physically and mentally, as well as experiencing the aftermath with the parents. (Evans, Davies, Derillo, 2008). In other words, the child may hear one of their parents yelling, seeing a parent get battered, seeing the abused parent cry, or the violence may be so fueled with anger it find a way to blame the children too. It affects millions upon millions of children every year, In fact, 17.8 million violent domestic acts are in the presence of children (Evans, Davies, Derillo, 2008). Children are usually born into an already violent household. Many people start to have children because they believe it will change the outcome of the relationship. However, it rarely stops or changes. Usually, the violence just extends to the children. According to the domestic violence hotline, 30-60% of perpetrators of intimate partner violence abuse the children as well. Children who grow up in a violent household that is circled around patriarchal and anti-feminist beliefs have a set way of growing up. With a particular way of thinking, morals, and mindset. Violence is used to enforce gender norms, discipline, and as an expression of masculinity (O’hara, Namy 2017).

Childhood exposure to domestic violence is detrimental in virtually every aspect of a developing person. The mere threat that violence poses may be overwhelming for some children, producing a level of physiological and affective arousal that they cannot effectively manage. (Fosco, 2007). It interferes with the stability of their emotions, their behavior in society, and affects every aspect of their future endeavors. exposure to domestic violence may sensitize children to stress and undermine their capacity to regulate their effect; Difficulty regulating emotion, in turn, is likely to increase children’s risk of developing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Grych, 2000; Scheeringa & Zeanah, 1995). According to the national child traumatic stress report, some immediate effects of childhood exposure may include anxiety, depression, nightmares, angry outbursts, codependency on a particular parent, physical health problems, and physical pain with seemingly no cause. Witnessing violence between parents also may lead children to become hypervigilant to signs of anger and conflict in relationships outside of the family and to appraise them as more threatening than the situation would warrant (Grych 2007).

With each age of childhood exposure, comes it own set of damaging effects. While every child, situation, and reactions are different, the effects may be immediate or delayed as well as the severity can differ. Some examples of what a child may experience from age of birth to five years of age may include, being strongly influenced by one of their parent’s reactions (Days 2016). Meaning that if an infant witnesses either one of their parent reacting aggressively or violently to something. The infant may learn to react that way with little inconveniences or with something they do not want to do, this goes along with another common trait which is being easily irritable and fussy. An infant may also be easily startled (Days 2016). What is happening to them is incomprehensible at that age however, it is the most developmental stages of their lives. They will often hear loud and terrifying noises accompanied by the few people that the infant knows being either angry or injured. It leaves the child with the knee-jerk reaction of scared. Often times, the infant may cling to a parent. In most cases it is the victim of the violence, this may be due to sharing the same fear and anxiety. Some reactions that a normal infant may have may be deemed to be not masculine enough, thus starting the toxic masculinity early and encompassing in into a young impressionable child.

Domestic violence disrupts every developmental stage of a child. The next documented stage is elementary school age children, ages six to eleven. They most likely will have trouble concentrating in school, trouble with finishing schoolwork, and trouble with classmates (Days 2016). When a house is filled with domestic violence there is no home to go back to. The house is filled with walking on eggshells along with constant anxiety and fear. It is possible that school is one of the only peaceful and somewhat quiet places a child can escape to. Frankly, schoolwork is the last thing on their mind. One may even want to get detention and stay after so as to avoid going home. As for the trouble against peers, when children are the victims of violence, they may be more likely to view violence as an acceptable form of emotional expression or conflict resolution (O’Keefe, 1997). The act of violence is a seemingly normal reaction to the child. Therefore they are likely to exhibit violent behavior against friends or classmates as a way of solving issues or just simply communicating. In some instances, they may even enjoy inflicting pain on others. Social learning theory suggests that children who frequently witness violence in the home may come to perceive it as a normative way to resolve disagreements with others, especially if it results in some gain for the perpetrator, and argues that the behavior of the same-sex parent is especially salient to children (Goodman, Barfoot, Frye, & Belli, 1999; Marcus et al., 2001). Children may also become quiet and withdrawn (Days 2016.) This may be both at school or at home. If it is at home, it is because the child does not feel like they are at home, it is dangerous grounds and at times it is best to stay withdrawn and quiet. If it is at school, it may be because the child is distracted, embarrassed, possibly doesn’t know how to act or react and what is right and wrong anymore.

When the child grows into preteen-teen years, their personality and the way they react in society and others may be a permanent personality trait. Ages thirteen to eighteen years of age may experience generalized depression, anxiety, and frequent nightmares (Days 2016). The child’s home is now a trigger for anxiety attacks and nightmares. It is hard to differentiate the reality at home with the nightmares, there may even be symbolic symbols of the violence and fear in the dreams. A child may often experience emotional numbing (Grych 2007). Domestic violence is a traumatic event, so much so that there were children diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, emotional numbing is a common effect. According to the childhood trauma center when children grow up in a violent household they are twice as likely to be in one when they are older as well. This includes both the feminist theory and the social learning theory. The boys grow into men, having the toxic masculinity and the need for a dominant mindset results in violent future relationships with their future partner. This scenario can also explain the social learning theory, whereas they saw their dad do it and learned that it is an appropriate reaction in relationships. On the other hand, due to the feminist theory the girls grow into women and have the mindset as being the subordinate to men, and therefore are likely to fall into relationships with dominant abusers. While the child may move out at when fully grown, the effects of growing up with domestic violence travel far into adulthood. It is a lifelong battle to overcome the damage it has done socially, emotionally, and physically.

Growing up in a household with domestic violence can be very lonely, especially if there are no siblings to turn to for support. A parents’ capacity to provide proper care may be compromised in violent families; Mothers in abusive relationships tend to report higher levels of parenting stress (Holden et al., 1998), feel less warm and effective as parents (Levendosky & Graham-Bermann, 2001) and experience problems with depression, self-esteem, and psychological distress (Grych 2007). A developing child needs a support system, to be disciplined while still having proper emotional support. In a violent household, these are hard to come by. The abused parent is likely suffering as battered and they become the shell of what they once were. There may be small-scale personality, parenting, and childhood bonds. As for the other parent, the abuser, it has been shown to also have a low parenting rate. In the traditional case where the father is the abuser his maltreatment and lack of involvement with their children add to the impact of interparental violence for children (Holden et al., 1998; Holden & Ritchie, 1991), and that children’s self-concept is poorest when the perpetrator of violence is a child’s father rather than step-father (Grych 2007). There is a lot of blame in a violent household, the abuser blames the victim, the victim blames themselves, and the child blames just about everyone. Even more so with young age. Young victims of physical abuse routinely experience feelings of isolation, shame, fear, and guilt. (Herrenkohl 2008). A child may think that their bad actions caused the abuser to lash out. Often times the child may blame the victim, thinking they did something to deserve it. Especially the older they get they start questioning why they were put in this position, questioning why the parent married someone like this, why they have not left, why they have not loved them enough to protect them from the darkness of their father. It can be very easy to blame the victim. However, this is not the only case. There have been reports of more conflictual relationships with the fathers, blaming them for causing the argument (Grych 2007). Every family situation is different and it differs from each household. Though there is one thing that stays the same, just one decent relationship between child and parent can make all the difference. Maintaining a positive and emotionally nurturing relationship with at least one parent may help diminish the degree to which children feel threatened, anxious, or unable to cope (Grych 2007). Unfortunately, under most circumstances, this is rarely possible.

Despite all the darkness and severe childhood trauma, children are resilient. While there are many obstacles to overcome, mental stability, school performance, and outside relationships all become compromised. However, it is not impossible to heal, lead a normal life, and to break the everlasting cycle of violence. According to Unicef, one of the most vital things the child needs is a sense of routine and normalcy. Escaping from a violent household is difficult, though not impossible. Having a home to go back to is one of the first things a child needs to start the healing process. It is important to have some form of close relationship with an adult, someone to confide in and trust. Lastly, support services is a helpful and effective way to cope after trauma. Such as a therapist to help the child understand what had happened, to teach that there is more to life and violence is not the way. The cycle of violence is a whirlwind of destruction to get stuck in, though it can be escaped.

Domestic violence is unspoken, destructive, and hidden from the outside world. It destroys families and every single person in it. Domestic violence is a pattern of controlling and manipulating behavior that is meant take hold of all the power in a relationship. Intimate partner violence is when it occurs in a romantic relationship. There is never a good way to figure out what is going on behind closed doors. A family could seemingly be happy and loving. One would not have the slightest clue that every night the father hurts his family in ways that the outside world won’t be able to see the scars. Millions upon millions of children are exposed to domestic violence every year. Childhood exposure to domestic violence has various negative effects on the child’s behavior, mental health, school performance, and future relationships. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression also are found more often than the norm in abuse victims during and after abuse (Herrenkohl 2008). The feminist theory is based on the patriarchal society whereas women are often objectified and seen as property to men. Violence occurs to keep the men in power and to keep the wife to stay in their domesticated place. The feminist theory may not explain every case of intimate partner violence, though, it is the reason for most. In the traditional husband is the abuser case, it is because society has taught men since the beginning of time to be dominant over women. Violence occurs with a correlation to toxic masculinity. It will never cease to exist but it can be managed.

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Essay: VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

M an and society are born out of both: violence and gentle cooperation.” That is how Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim defines a paradoxical but inescapable fact touching the whole history of “the children of Cain.” How the two forces are balanced in an individual helps determine his behavior, even his sanity. How they are balanced in society helps determine its political organization, the degree and condition of its civilization. In the U.S. today, it seems to many that violence is in the ascendant over cooperation, disruption over order, and anger over reason.

The greatest single source of this fear lies in the Negro riots that keep tearing at American cities. What is alarming about them is not merely the frustration and bitterness they proclaim, not merely the physical and psychological damage they cause, but also the fact that a few Negro leaders are deliberately trying to justify the riots with a violent and vengeful ideology. This in turn can all too easily be seen as just one aspect of a whole American panorama of violence.

The crime rate keeps rising, or seems to, especially in senseless killings and wanton attacks. Fear of the darkened city streets has become a fact of urban life. The memories of bizarre multiple murders linger in the mind—13 people dead in Austin from a sniper’s rifle, eight nurses in Chicago killed by a demented drifter. The recollection of the Kennedy assassination remains part of the scene. A burgeoning, largely uncontrolled traffic in guns has put firearms into some 50 million American homes, many of their owners insisting that the weapons are needed for self-defense. In the movies and on television, murder and torture seem to be turning Americans into parlor sadists. A recent trend on the stage is the “theater of cruelty,” and a growing number of books delve into the pornography of violence.

The rest of the world is ready to adjudge America as an excessively violent country in which brutal, irrational force can erupt any minute on a massive scale. This view is reinforced by the sheer driving energy of the U.S. It seems confirmed by the American folklore of violence—the Western and the gangster saga—which audiences all over the world worship as epic entertainment and as a safe refuge for dreams of lawless freedom. In a very different way, the view of America the Violent is also reinforced by the Vietnamese war, in which critics both at home and abroad profess to see a growing strain of American brutality.

Comparative Mayhem

Violence is so universal and elusive that sociology and psychology can only approximate a complex truth. Comparisons with other countries are illuminating but hardly conclusive. The U.S. has certainly experienced nothing like the massacre of 400,000 Communists in Indonesia; nor have Watts or Newark approached the lethal fury of an Indian or an Arab mob. But these are countries at vastly different levels of civilization. In the industrialized world, the U.S. undeniably ranks high in violence. The U.S. homicide rate stands at around five deaths for 100,000 people. This compares with .7 in England, 1.4 in Canada, 1.5 in France, 1.5 in Japan (but 32 in Mexico). Within the U.S., the rate varies widely, from about 11 per 100,000 in Georgia and Alabama to 6.1 in New York and .5 in Vermont. Not that homicide or any other statistics can tell the complete story.

The U.S. is in the grip of a semipermanent revolution, constantly undergoing social and economic changes that in Europe might send people to the barricades. Occasionally, Americans may still try to re-enact the two-fisted frontiersman, but the real source of much American violence is the swift pace of social change, which can be deeply disturbing to the less stable personalities in a society. Europe has usually experienced its revolutions spasmodically, at fairly long intervals, while in between it tends to defer to official authority far more than do Americans.

Measuring itself not against others but against its own past, the U.S. has good reason to believe that the country as a whole is growing less violent. The roots of violence in the American past are obvious: the Revolution, the Indian wars, slavery, the Civil War, that crucial and necessary test between two societies (when Fort Sumter was fired on, Emerson said: “Now we have a country again. Sometimes gunpowder smells good”). Race riots erupted almost as soon as the Negroes were emancipated, the worst being the New York draft riots of 1863. The Ku Klux Klan relied on raw violence to keep the Negroes from exercising the rights they had gained. In its way, frontier violence was also the result of social change: new, transplanted populations, new sources of wealth, new elites struggling for power. The wonder, perhaps, was not that the frontier was violent, but that its people tried so quickly to establish some sort of law.

Changing Pattern

In the cities, each wave of new immigration evoked violent reactions, many of which were instigated in the mid-1800s by the original Know-Nothings and their many later imitators. Immigrant groups themselves battled with one another, caught up in ethnic feuds. Above all, the American labor movement was the most violent in the world. From the 1870s to the 1930s, bloody battles between strikers and company cops or state militia were frequent. Labor leaders often deliberately used violence to dramatize the workers’ plight—and, in time, they succeeded. On the fringes of the movement were some odd secret organizations, including the Molly Maguires, a band of Pennsylvania miners who assassinated fellow workers and bosses alike in an attempt to win better pay and working conditions. The Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) sang the praises of violence and provided numerous labor saints and martyrs. The great gangs that appeared in Chicago, New York and elsewhere in the 1920s were also social symptoms: not merely the fiefdoms of “little Caesars” bent on money and power, but the expression of a moral vacuum in the U.S.

Against this background, violence on the American scene today is still alarming, but it scarcely suggests a disastrous deterioration. Public tolerance of violence seems lower than ever before in U.S. life, and public respect for law far higher. Above all, there is evidence to show that—some statistics to the contrary—violent crime in the U.S. is not really growing relative to the population. After massive researches, the President’s Crime Commission admits that crime trends cannot be conclusively proven out by available figures. According to FBI reckoning, crimes of violence have risen about 35% so far in the 1960s. But these figures fail to consider two important factors: population growth and changes in crime reporting. Experts believe that part of the apparent increase is caused by the fact that each year the police grow more thorough—and the poor are less reluctant—about reporting crime that previously went unrecorded. Says Sociologist Marvin Wolfgang, president of the American Society of Criminology: “Contrary to the rise in public fear, crimes of violence are not significantly increasing.”

But their pattern is changing. The incidence of murder and robbery relative to population has decreased by 30% in the past three decades. On the other hand, rape has tripled. Males are seven times more likely to commit violent crimes than women, but the women are catching up: in five years, arrests of women for crimes of violence rose 62% above 1960 v. 18% for men. From the newest figures, certain other patterns emerge. Despite widespread fear of strangers, most crimes of violence are committed by a member of the family or an acquaintance. The arrest rate for murder among Negroes is ten times that among whites, but most of the violent crimes committed by Negroes are against other Negroes. Violence is increasingly an urban phenomenon: 26 large cities containing less than one-fifth of the U.S. population account for more than half of all major crimes against the person. Poets sometimes have sociological insights, and Robert Lowell knew what he was talking about in his lines:

When Cain beat out his brother Abel’s brains

The Maker laid great cities in his soul.

Innate or Learned

Violence is not only an urban but overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon. In Atlanta, for example, neighborhoods with family incomes below $3,000 show a violent-crime rate eight times higher than among $9,000 families. In the middle class, violence is perhaps sublimated increasingly in sport or other pursuits. Says Sociologist Wolfgang: “The gun and fist have been substantially replaced by financial ability, by the capacity to manipulate others in complex organizations, and by intellectual talent. The thoughtful wit, the easy verbalizer, even the striving musician and artist are equivalents of male assertiveness, where broad shoulders and fighting fists were once the major symbols.”

What are the seeds of violence? Freud found “a powerful measure of desire for aggression” in human instincts. He added: “The very emphasis of the commandment ‘Thou shall not kill’ makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood, as it is perhaps also in ours.” Further, Freud held that man possesses a death instinct which, since it cannot be satisfied except in suicide, is instead turned outward as aggression against others. Dr. Fredric Wertham, noted crusader against violence, disagrees sharply and argues that violence is learned behavior, not a product of nature but of society: “The violent man is not the natural but the socially alienated man.”

The fact is that if violence is not innate, it is a basic component of human behavior. The German naturalist Konrad Lorenz believes that, unlike other carnivores, man did not at an early stage develop inhibitions against killing members of his own species—because he was too weak. As he developed weapons, he learned to kill, and he also learned moral restraints, but these never penetrated far enough. Writes Lorenz: “The deep emotional layers of our personality simply do not register the fact that the cocking of a forefinger to release a shot tears the entrails of another man.”

The yearning for nonviolence is as real as the yearning for love but, East or West, no religion has succeeded in establishing a society based on it. When trying to point to a really nonviolent community, anthropologists are usually forced to resort to the Arapesh of New Guinea or the Pygmies of the Ituri rain forest in the Congo. The human impulse to violence cannot be completely denied or suppressed. When that is tried, the result is often an inner violence in man that can burst out all the more fiercely later. At times the U.S. displays a kind of false prudery about violence to the point where, in the words of Psychiatrist Robert Coles, “almost anything related to forcefulness and the tensions between people is called violent.” While this attitude (including Dr. Wertham’s frequent blasts at anything from military toys to Batman) is plainly unrealistic, there is no denying that a gruesome violence on screens and in print is threatening to get out of hand. According to one theory, such vicarious experience of violence is healthy because it relieves the viewer’s own aggressions. But recent tests suggest the opposite.

Violence can be a simple, rational reaching for a goal, in its legal form of war or its illegal form of crime. It can often be irrational, as in a seemingly senseless killing or quarrel. But the distinction between irrational and rational violence is not easily drawn. Even the insane murderer kills to satisfy a need entirely real to him. Violence is often caused by “displaced aggression,” when anger is forced to aim at a substitute target. Every psychologist knows that a man might beat his child because he cannot beat his boss. And a man may even murder because he feels rejected or “alienated.” But what leads one man in such a situation to kill and another merely to get drunk is a question psychologists have never really answered. There is no doubt that violence has a cathartic effect, and the pressures that cause it must find an outlet of one kind or another. (Japan’s Matsushita Electric Co. has set up a dummy of the foreman that workers can beat up on a given day once a week, thereby presumably releasing their aggressions.)

But the aims of violence are usually mixed. Several violent codes combine a functional purpose with an emotional mystique. This was true of the aristocratic dueling code, which served to maintain a social hierarchy that became enshrouded in trappings of honor and death. It is true of the city gang, which functions as a rough and ready community but also includes a mystique in which violence is equated with courage and crime with merit. It is, finally, true of revolutionary ideology, which combines the brutal but often practical belief that only violence can pull down the existing order through a crude poetry about the purifying properties of blood and fire. “I believe in the cutting off of heads,” proclaimed Marat during the French Revolution, and his contemporary, the Marquis de Sade, preached, in the duller pages of his books, the virtue of murder as policy. Explains Brandeis University Sociologist Lewis Coser: “The act of violence commits a man symbolically to the revolutionary movement and breaks his ties with his previous life. He is, so to speak, reborn.” The late Frantz Fanon, a polemicist for anticolonial revolution, wrote: “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex.”

Cutting Edge

It is something resembling this revolutionary mystique that Stokely Carmichael and a few others are trying to impose on the Amerian Negro movement. Mixed with the anarchical slogans of “Burn, baby, burn!” and “Tear down the courthouses,” there is a calculated conviction that violence is above all else a language, and that this language, through fear, will persuade white society to give things to the Negro that it would not otherwise give. Says Lester Mc-Kinney, Washington head of S.N.C.C.: “In the minds of the people, history has proved that any meaningful social change has come through a bloody revolution.” Many Negro leaders point to the violent tactics of the labor movement in gaining its ends. Even Negro Sociologist Kenneth Clark, no advocate of black power, calls violence “the cutting edge of justice.” Social change for Negroes is moving faster than at any time in 100 years; for that very reason, Negroes were able to decide that things were still moving too slowly. The riots, as the President’s Crime Commission report puts it, are a way to “let America know.”

But the language of violence is crude and dangerous for those who use it. As Hannah Arendt notes, the Western tradition is full of violence and its legend seems to say, “whatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide”; yet she also points out that neither wars nor revolutions are “ever completely determined by violence. Where violence rules absolutely, everything and everybody must fall silent.” Violence is not power. In the last analysis it is an admission of failure, a desire for a magical shortcut, an act of despair. Shameful though conditions in the Negro ghettos are, violence is not really the only language left in which to appeal for improvement.

Dealing with violence, the U.S. faces several tasks, none easy. One is to provide more intelligent, effective law enforcement and, through legislation, to do away with the dangerous unfettered sale of firearms. Another is nothing less than the elimination of the ghetto and what it stands for: an increasingly disaffected population. Though probably there will always be violence—out of anger or greed, love or madness—large-scale, socially significant violence is usually caused by authentic grievances, and the U.S. should be able to narrow if not eliminate these. But that leaves, finally, the individual flash or explosion of violence; and to deal with this, man must learn more about man—the mystery that can turn creative energy into brute force, a peaceful crowd into a mob, and an ineffectual weakling into a mass murderer.

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What are the effects of domestic violence on the family?

Many believe that the home is supposed to be a safe space in which to grow up, develop and thrive. After all—we might often rely on those closest to us for support, compassion and guidance as we get our start. With this in mind, when the home is a setting for violence, there can be severe and wide-ranging effects across the family. 

Domestic violence—defined by many as violent behavior on the part of an intimate partner, family member or other close relation—can lead to serious mental and physical effects, some of which may not be readily apparent. While people who are in abusive relationships might have a hard time removing themselves from the situation, there can be options made available that can help them take the next steps toward having a healthy, safe home environment. 

This article will cover many of the effects of domestic violence on families and provide possible options for survivors to get support. 

What is domestic violence?

To understand the effects of domestic violence on the family, it can be important to understand what is meant by the term “domestic violence”—also called intimate partner violence when involving a romantic relationship. In short, it can involve the physical, sexual, emotional or financial abuse of one person (or people) by another (or others).

Common forms of abuse can include unwanted physical contact, ranging from occasional shoving to sexual assault or rape; emotional manipulation, including “gaslighting”, accusations of infidelity or threats of harm—as well as asserting control through denial of financial support or other resources.

The abuser might be the stronger one in the relationship in many cases—and through violence, they might use this strength to exert control over the other person. Though women and children, along with the elderly, are generally regarded as the most common survivors of domestic violence, men can also experience abuse. 

If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, finding help can be key to long-term recovery—whether through legal action, a domestic violence hotline, mental health care or other channels.

Who is affected by domestic violence?

Domestic violence can affect people from all backgrounds, races, and classes. According to the CDC, domestic violence is a reality for approximately 41% of women in the US, while a reported 33% of men experience intimate partner violence in their lives. Additionally, one out of every seven children in the United States will experience abuse or neglect. 

Though domestic violence is generally regarded as a widespread issue, it often goes unreported—making its true prevalence hard to grasp. Many people who experience abuse do not report it due to various factors, such as fear of retaliation, lack of reach to resources and concern regarding the response of others.  

Having conversat ions about domestic violence and listening to the stories of survivors can be a vital part of addressing the issue successfully.

Effects of domestic violence on adults

It can be important to note that people can respond to traumatic events in different ways, and that the effects of abuse can vary from person to person. However, understanding the general effects can create a more empathetic and supportive societal experience for abuse survivors. We’ve listed possible effects of abuse below: 

Many who experience domestic violence can develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research shows that women, for example, who experience intimate partner violence statistically develop PTSD at a rate of between 51% and 75%—which is well above the approximately 10% rate experienced by the general population of women. 

Other mental health concerns that can develop following abuse include depression, anxiety disorders and substance use disorder. Additionally, the person being abused may feel that they’ve lost control—or in some cases, start to believe that they deserve it—which can lead to self-esteem struggles in general.  

The physical effects of abuse can include bruising, fractured bones, tension, disruptions in dietary or sleep patterns and exhaustion. The survivor may try to cover up these signs of abuse with long clothing or makeup, so as not to draw attention from other members of society or the home. 

Additionally, individuals who are experiencing abuse might exhibit behavior that is uncharacteristic. For example: Someone who is normally happy and energetic may become withdrawn and reserved. 

If you notice that someone in your life is displaying some of these signs or experiencing the above effects, you might consider reaching and offering support in a safe and appropriate manner. 

Effects of domestic violence on children and adolescents

Children can experience the symptoms or signs of abuse listed above, as well as others. 

Even if a child is not directly abused, when they grow up in an environment of domestic abuse or violence, they may live with fear and intense feelings of sadness. This can lead to the formation of mental health conditions later on, such as depression and substance use disorder. 

A child growing up in an abusive environment may also struggle to visualize or prepare for the future, possibly leading to challenges in school and behavioral concerns. Children may also internalize the negative effects of abuse. The effects of domestic violence are not always easy to see. Some children experiencing domestic violence may try to hide it. Additional signs to watch for can include:

Low self-esteem

Hypervigilance

Regression and withdrawal

Aggression and disobedience

Trouble concentrating

Anxiety disorder formation

Sleep difficulties

Bed-wetting

Thumb-sucking

Frequent crying

Experiences of domestic violence may also manifest as physical symptoms. For instance: Anxiety disorders may present in the form of diarrhea, nausea, or hives. Symptoms may also change as children grow. Adolescents who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence may exhibit such symptoms as:

Poor grades, numerous absences, or dropping out of school entirely

Eating disorders

Becoming abusive themselves, either to their peers or their parents

Substance use disorder

If you are struggling with substance use, contact the SAMHSA National Helpline at (800) 662-4357 to receive support and resources. Support is available 24/7.

Physical injuries sustained from standing up to their abuser

Running away from home or looking for excuses not to go home

Suicidal thoughts (If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, help is available. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 and can be reached by calling or texting 988, or by chatting with a representative.)

Symptoms of trauma

Engaging in risky behaviors

Getting in trouble with the law

Trouble making or keeping friends

The severity of a child’s symptoms can increase over time and might depend on the length of time the child has been exposed to abuse, the extent of the abuse and the age of the child. However, with the right approach, a child can begin to heal and recover from these symptoms. 

Support for child survivors of domestic violence

Children deserve a home life that is safe and nurturing. Many may find that one of the best ways to support a child experiencing the effects of abuse is by helping to build their resilience. You can do this by helping foster a positive mindset, letting them know you’re there for them, giving them an outlet for their emotions and modeling healthy relationships for them. 

Therapy can also be a healthy way for children to work through trauma or other effects of domestic violence. Counseling can help children process their feelings, develop tools to control their emotions and find healthy ways to cope with their memories.

Support for adult survivors of domestic violence

If you are in a situation where you are experiencing, or are a survivor of, domestic violence, help is available. The following resources can connect you with support and guidance. 

National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233)

National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline (1-866-331-9474) or TTY (1-866-331-8453)

RAINN | National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) Choose #1 to talk to a counselor

RAINN’s online chat

US Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health – Provides a list of resources for domestic violence based on where you live.

These resources can help you develop a plan for removing yourself from whatever situation you are in, and can give you tips on keeping yourself safe. 

Telling someone what you’re going through can often be the first step toward getting help. You may consider contacting a trusted friend or family member who may be able to give you help in the form of a place to stay, financial support or advice. 

Online therapy can support you

If you’re living with mental health challenges related to domestic violence or similar concerns, know that help can be made available. With an online therapy platform like BetterHelp, you can choose to participate in therapy anonymously, which can make it more comfortable if you are living with domestic violence. 

You’ll also have the option of contacting your therapist outside of sessions; so, if you forgot to mention something during therapy or you have a question about trauma or abuse, you can send them a message, and they can respond when they’re able. 

Is online therapy effective?

Studies suggest that online therapy can help individuals cope with the effects of domestic violence. In one study, researchers examined the  effectiveness of online therapy for people who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression after surviving intimate partner violence. 

After treatment, 41.7% of participants no longer fit the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. 

The study also references and confirms the ability of online therapy to help many to overcome barriers like perceived stigma, which often prevents survivors of abuse from seeking help.  

What are the effects of domestic violence and conflicts?

Domestic violence and conflict in the home have a significant impact on the family. Although outcomes often vary, instability and fear within the family unit are typical. Individuals may experience increased anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and an overall state of diminished mental health. 

Children who experience or witness domestic violence may exhibit emotional and behavioral problems at school or in social situations. Children often experience depression, isolation, and anxiety. A wide swath of research suggests that children growing up in violent homes are at increased risk for developing problems during adolescence and adulthood, including incarceration, substance use disorders, and engaging in violent behavior themselves. 

The effects of familial strife often spread to areas of life that aren't immediately obvious. For example, abuse can have complex, adverse spiritual effects on some individuals. This may create a sense of hopelessness or emptiness, and, in some cases, individuals end up feeling suicidal.

If you or a loved one are experiencing suicidal thoughts, reach out for help immediately. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

What are the five effects of violence?

The effects of violence are shared across many contexts. For example, community violence can produce psychological trauma in individuals that leads to violent behavior at home. On an individual level, five psychological effects of domestic violence may include: 

• Antisocial Behavior
• Withdrawal And Isolation

How does domestic violence affect the victim mentality?

"Victim mentality" can be a tricky concept within the context of domestic violence. Sometimes, abusers may accuse their partner of having a "victim mentality" to minimize their role in the abuse. In other cases, the abuser may exhibit traits of victim mentality that "justifies" their abusive behavior.

In any case, it's vital for people to understand that abuse survivors' experiences are very real and should always be taken seriously. No survivor should ever have to shoulder any of the blame for their situation because they have a "victim mentality."

That said, domestic violence and psychological manipulation typically go hand-in-hand. An abuser may break down a survivor's mental state to convince them that they're to blame for the abuse and are operating under a victim mentality mindset. 

What are the five effects of abuse?

The ramifications of violence are far-reaching and may spread beyond the family unit to school, the workplace, and the community. At home, however, children are typically affected the most profoundly. When there is violence in the home, children may: 

• Have greater difficulty controlling their emotions— leading to more intense feelings of pain, anger, and sadness. As a result, kids may have nightmares, difficulty sleeping, problems interacting with others, and disruptions in development. 
• Have feelings of mistrust and fear towards others, creating serious interpersonal challenges that lead to withdrawal and isolation. Children from abusive homes may have increased difficulty establishing and maintaining healthy relationships into adulthood.
• Experience depression, panic attacks, and other psychological conditions due to the profound traumatic impact of violence. 
• Be more likely to perpetrate interpersonal violence as adolescents and adults.
• Experience decreased brain functioning due to the common physical effects of abuse . For example, traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children due to involuntary shaking changes how the brain regulates mood, memory, and cognitive functioning.

What are the four different effects of physical abuse?

The impacts of physical abuse are complex and often long-term. Four different ways that physical abuse can affect individuals include:

1. Physical

When unaddressed, physical abuse can result in permanent damage in the form of lifelong health problems, chronic illness, or death. Indeed, 2021 data from the American Society for the Positive Care of Children (American SPCC) indicates that five children die every day from child abuse . 

To avoid such outcomes, cases of physical abuse require swift intervention. Recognizing some of the signs of physical trauma can help individuals prevent permanent injuries and fatalities. If you suspect someone is being abused in the home, you might look for:

• Purple marks on the body from bruising.
• Neck sprain/Injury
• Cuts/Abrasions
• Bone Fractures/Breaks
• Lacerations

It's also prudent to note that abuse often results in psychological trauma with common physical symptoms such as trouble with the breath, muscle tension, fatigue, tremors, nausea, and heart palpitations.

2. Psychological

Abuse, particularly during childhood , can cause psychological trauma that individuals carry for an extended period or the rest of their lives. These often come in the form of mental illnesses such as PTSD, depression, severe anxiety, panic disorder, dissociative disorder, and personality disorders. 

Abuse can negatively impact a child's social development throughout adolescence and into adulthood. Many individuals with a history of abuse have attachment issues that make it difficult to form and maintain bonds with others. They might experience trust issues or self-esteem problems that cause social withdrawal and isolation. 

4. Developmental

Physical abuse has far-reaching consequences on a child's development. It can stunt brain growth, creating problems with cognitive development, memory loss, attentional difficulties, and learning disorders. 

What are the effects of abuse on the mind?

Child abuse and neglect can cause long-term impairment in brain functioning, emotional regulation, self-control, stress response, and memory. 

What are the seven signs of emotional abuse?

Emotional abuse can manifest in various ways depending on time, place, and circumstances.  While there isn't a fixed list of signs that universally define it, here are seven common indicators:

• Constant Criticism: An abuser may belittle their partner or make them feel inadequate about their actions, thoughts, or appearance. Emotional abusers may use their partner's vulnerabilities against them by targeting specific areas they feel most insecure about. 
• Isolation: The abuser may isolate their partner from friends, families, or even activities they once enjoyed. The purpose of isolating is to make the partner feel dependent on their abuser for support and validation.
• Gaslighting: This refers to manipulating another's perception of reality, creating doubt about the individual's own memories, thoughts, or feelings. Gaslighting techniques are often used to make a partner feel "crazy" or confused about what's real. 
• Control: An abuser often tries to control as many aspects of their partner's life as possible. This means restricting their independence and controlling their daily activities, actions, decisions, and finances. They'll also monitor the partner's movements and may use technology to track their whereabouts constantly. 
• Placing Guilt And Blame: Emotional abusers shift the responsibility for their behavior to their partner to make them feel guilty about things that aren't their fault. 
• Emotional Withdrawal: An emotional abuser might intentionally withdraw from their partner—ignoring them, withholding affection, or giving the "silent treatment" to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and tension. 
• Intimidation And Threats: Verbal, physical, or emotionally threatening behavior is often used by emotional abusers to instill fear, and control a partner's actions. 

What are the five signs of psychological abuse?

Psychological abuse is designed to cause emotional or mental harm to an individual with the aim of controlling them. It can take many forms but is often repetitive and can cause irreparable damage. Five signs of psychological abuse include: 

• Embarrassing a partner in public or in front of friends, family, colleagues, and peers. An abuser may call them names or constantly correct what they say or do to make the partner look or feel foolish. 
• Using things like race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or family to cause psychological distress about the things they can't change about themselves. 
• Ignoring a partner, pretending they aren't there, or withholding affection. 
• Gaslighting by saying or doing things that make the partner feel confused. An abuser may say things or move/change things, then deny it and claim they must be going crazy or their memory is failing. 
• Threatening to harm the individual's pets, children, or other important people in a partner's life to frighten and control them. 

What are the seven main categories of abuse?

The seven most commonly recognized categories of domestic abuse include physical, psychological, verbal, emotional, financial, sexual, and digital abuse/cyberbullying. 

• Important information about domestic violence: What to know and how to stay safe Medically reviewed by Laura Angers Maddox , NCC, LPC
• What Is The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence? Medically reviewed by Melissa Guarnaccia , LCSW
• Domestic Violence
• Relationships and Relations

Chicago students honored for powerful essays on violence impact

'do the write thing' finalists announced in chicago.

There were 100 students honored Tuesday night for writing essays about how violence affects them.

CHICAGO - One hundred students were recognized on Monday for their essays reflecting on the impact of violence in their lives and communities.

The event, known as "Do the Write Thing," is part of a nationwide initiative aimed at curbing violence. The celebratory ceremony unfolded at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where the young participants were joined by their families, teachers and school principals.

Out of a total of 800 submissions from middle school students across the city, the top ten finalists emerged. From this talented pool, two exceptional individuals were unveiled as the winners.

Rylie Thompson, representing Arthur Dixon Elementary, and Beautiful Pearson, from Parker Community Academy, clinched the coveted titles. 

Alongside their well-deserved trophies, Thompson and Pearson secured an all-expenses-paid journey to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

During their visit, the students will have the opportunity to explore the esteemed Library of Congress and, potentially, engage with policymakers. Furthermore, their compelling essays have been immortalized in a book, slated for preservation within the Library of Congress's archives.

Beautiful Pearson's essay can be found HERE or below.

Rylie Thompson's essay can be found HERE or below.

The murders of Aboriginal women are too often ignored. Is now the moment for real change?

Analysis The murders of Aboriginal women are too often ignored. Is now the moment for real change?

In what can feel like a never-ending loop, Australians are marching (again) for justice for women whose lives have been snatched away by violent men.

But, for decades, Australia has covered its ears to the screams and cries of Indigenous women who have been let down by politicians, police and protest movements .

The unimaginable terror that too many First Nations women have been subjected to must be at the heart of our national response to domestic violence if anything is going to change.

Under-funded shelters and crisis support programs run by Aboriginal women have been described as "homicide prevention", and they're often left shattered when the young mothers they care for end up murdered.

The rage, despair and grief that Australian women are feeling now will be measured by the seriousness with which ministers and premiers respond.

It's true that violence against women is a complex problem. Yet Indigenous women know that politicians hold the keys to billion-dollar budgets, emergency responses, legislative reform and the power to drive a new narrative.

Imagine if that power was channelled to put the concerns of First Nations women's needs at the centre of every emergency cabinet meeting.

What if we used this moment to listen to some of the truly shocking and sickening stories of women who desperately tried to get help before they were killed?

Aboriginal women reached out for help before their violent murders

For years, as Indigenous affairs reporters, we've investigated prolific murders of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

During an in-depth investigation for Four Corners in 2022, we found that at least 315 Indigenous women had been murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances between 2000 and 2022. Some of these women's bodies have never been found.

Their stories leapt off from the page. Young women — mothers and daughters — each with their own hopes and dreams for their lives to come.

Roberta, who wanted to be a model. Serina, who her family describe as outgoing and friendly. Ms Haywood, a loving young mum.

But as we read on, hundreds of pages of coronial files began to reveal the horrific ways these women's lives were taken — all had tried to get help before being brutally murdered by men they knew.

Roberta was told by police to "stop calling" in the days before she was beaten to death by a former partner.

Ms Haywood was trying to hide from her serially violent former partner in a bathroom when he poured petrol outside the door and set the house on fire. She later died of her injuries in hospital.

Then there's Serina, who was found with 56 injuries on her body, inflicted by her former partner in remote South Australia, while he was supposed to be on trial for sexual assault in Alice Springs.

Since our investigation, tragically, more Indigenous women have been killed by current and former partners. This week, we learned that as the rate of intimate partner homicides has increased, about 20 per cent of victims are Indigenous people.

The Aboriginal-controlled organisation Djirra says that at least seven of the 64 women killed in 2023 were First Nations women.

First Nations women 'fear the system as much as their abuser'

When it comes to reaching out to police or other services for help, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women face unique barriers.

When we looked into the murders of Indigenous women, we found multiple cases where women were subjected to what researchers call the "under-policing" of victims and survivors of family violence.

In the case of Ms Haywood, the NT Coroner has heard that she made several pleas for help in the days leading up to her death, including calling her local police station to tell officers her former partner was threatening her.

Queensland's Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service recently told a Senate inquiry into missing and murdered women that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are frightened of police and are often met with systemic racism and "an aggressive and heavy-handed response".

Antoinette Braybrook, a long-term advocate for Aboriginal women's safety and the chief executive of Djirra, has said Indigenous women tell legal services they often "fear the system as much as their abuser".

This is why so many experts on violence against Aboriginal women are cautious about rushing through law reform as a "knee-jerk" response to community anger over the spate of homicides so far this year.

Professor Kyllie Cripps, a Palawa woman and director of Indigenous studies at Monash University, says governments should be careful about going ahead with judicial changes — because often the concerns of Aboriginal people go unheard when there is law reform.

"If we storm ahead with law reforms, there will be unintended consequences, and typically those unintended consequences hurt our most vulnerable citizens," she says.

"To tinker with the law system that we have, that it will hurt people in ways that are unintended, and won't necessarily solve the problem at hand."

During a landmark coronial inquest into the murders of two Aboriginal women, the former NT Coroner Greg Cavanagh found that sending men in and out of prison was failing to rehabilitate violent offenders.

For too long, Aboriginal women have been saying that it should not be up to them alone to solve this emergency — more than 90 per cent of perpetrators in family and domestic violence cases are men.

It should not be a woman's responsibility to ensure her children are safe from violence, or that she can go to work and not be stalked or harassed, or that she's safe when coming home.

That's why many Indigenous communities are urging more focus on what can be done to shift the attitudes and behaviour of men who use violence.

'I was a violent man … I thought it was normal'

The ABC's Indigenous Affairs Team was granted exclusive access to a men's behavioural change program run by Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs .

There, we were able to experience the raw and unfiltered conversations between men who are convicted perpetrators of domestic and family violence.

They speak about their patterns of violence, what might trigger a violent episode, and how they've stalked, harassed, and financially abused their partners.

"You don't really think about it when you use violence, but you think about it later when you get locked up, and then it all comes back to you," said Nigel, one of the group's participants.

The Northern Territory has the highest rates of domestic and family violence in the country.

There, you are seven times more likely to be killed by your partner than anywhere else in the country. First Nations women are 10 times more likely to be killed by a partner than non-Indigenous women.

Six out of 10 men behind bars in the NT are there on charges relating to DV. Despite these high rates, there are only two men's behaviour change programs in the Territory.

The majority of the men who go through Tangentyere's program are mandated by courts to be there.

Very few go voluntarily. Nigel is one. Previously he was mandated to attend.

Nigel has been a serious repeat offender. He's been in and out of prison since the age of 17 mostly on charges relating to domestic violence.

He's now 51, and has been out of prison for 14 months now. It's his longest stint on the outside since he was a teenager.

Nigel says the program is helping him come to the realisation of what drove his violent past and take responsibility.

"Every time when I was drinking and using that violence and blaming, like, 'You made me do this. That's why I punched you' – all that stuff. It was just blaming, blaming her for all the wrongs that I've done, to make me feel better," he says.

"All them years in jail and I didn't know I had a problem. I was a violent man. I didn't know, I thought it was just normal.

"I'd just always say, 'She put me in jail again. She put me in jail'," Nigel says. "I did not point the finger back at myself. But now, 'I put myself in jail, because I used violence against her'. And I know I was in the wrong all that time."

But still a serious lack of services, for men and women, plague the country. There is an urgent need in regional and remote Aboriginal communities especially.

Evidence presented at the national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women revealed that out of 49 communities in the NT, only 19 had safe houses, two had men's behaviour change programs and none had family dispute resolution services.

Understandably, there is much more attention on and investment in supporting women and children fleeing violent relationships.

But why hasn't there been more investment in educating and helping the men who use that violence before we reach breaking point?

• X (formerly Twitter)

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In the campus protests over the war in Gaza, language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction.

By Zadie Smith

A philosophy without a politics is common enough. Aesthetes, ethicists, novelists—all may be easily critiqued and found wanting on this basis. But there is also the danger of a politics without a philosophy. A politics unmoored, unprincipled, which holds as its most fundamental commitment its own perpetuation. A Realpolitik that believes itself too subtle—or too pragmatic—to deal with such ethical platitudes as thou shalt not kill. Or: rape is a crime, everywhere and always. But sometimes ethical philosophy reënters the arena, as is happening right now on college campuses all over America. I understand the ethics underpinning the protests to be based on two widely recognized principles:

There is an ethical duty to express solidarity with the weak in any situation that involves oppressive power.

If the machinery of oppressive power is to be trained on the weak, then there is a duty to stop the gears by any means necessary.

The first principle sometimes takes the “weak” to mean “whoever has the least power,” and sometimes “whoever suffers most,” but most often a combination of both. The second principle, meanwhile, may be used to defend revolutionary violence, although this interpretation has just as often been repudiated by pacifistic radicals, among whom two of the most famous are, of course, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr . In the pacifist’s interpretation, the body that we must place between the gears is not that of our enemy but our own. In doing this, we may pay the ultimate price with our actual bodies, in the non-metaphorical sense. More usually, the risk is to our livelihoods, our reputations, our futures. Before these most recent campus protests began, we had an example of this kind of action in the climate movement. For several years now, many people have been protesting the economic and political machinery that perpetuates climate change, by blocking roads, throwing paint, interrupting plays, and committing many other arrestable offenses that can appear ridiculous to skeptics (or, at the very least, performative), but which in truth represent a level of personal sacrifice unimaginable to many of us.

I experienced this not long ago while participating in an XR climate rally in London. When it came to the point in the proceedings where I was asked by my fellow-protesters whether I’d be willing to commit an arrestable offense—one that would likely lead to a conviction and thus make travelling to the United States difficult or even impossible—I’m ashamed to say that I declined that offer. Turns out, I could not give up my relationship with New York City for the future of the planet. I’d just about managed to stop buying plastic bottles (except when very thirsty) and was trying to fly less. But never to see New York again? What pitiful ethical creatures we are (I am)! Falling at the first hurdle! Anyone who finds themselves rolling their eyes at any young person willing to put their own future into jeopardy for an ethical principle should ask themselves where the limits of their own commitments lie—also whether they’ve bought a plastic bottle or booked a flight recently. A humbling inquiry.

It is difficult to look at the recent Columbia University protests in particular without being reminded of the campus protests of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, some of which happened on the very same lawns. At that time, a cynical political class was forced to observe the spectacle of its own privileged youth standing in solidarity with the weakest historical actors of the moment, a group that included, but was not restricted to, African Americans and the Vietnamese. By placing such people within their ethical zone of interest, young Americans risked both their own academic and personal futures and—in the infamous case of Kent State—their lives. I imagine that the students at Columbia—and protesters on other campuses—fully intend this echo, and, in their unequivocal demand for both a ceasefire and financial divestment from this terrible war, to a certain extent they have achieved it.

But, when I open newspapers and see students dismissing the idea that some of their fellow-students feel, at this particular moment, unsafe on campus, or arguing that such a feeling is simply not worth attending to, given the magnitude of what is occurring in Gaza, I find such sentiments cynical and unworthy of this movement. For it may well be—within the ethical zone of interest that is a campus, which was not so long ago defined as a safe space, delineated by the boundary of a generation’s ethical ideas— it may well be that a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance, is, in that moment, the weakest participant in the zone. If the concept of safety is foundational to these students’ ethical philosophy (as I take it to be), and, if the protests are committed to reinserting ethical principles into a cynical and corrupt politics, it is not right to divest from these same ethics at the very moment they come into conflict with other imperatives. The point of a foundational ethics is that it is not contingent but foundational. That is precisely its challenge to a corrupt politics.

Practicing our ethics in the real world involves a constant testing of them, a recognition that our zones of ethical interest have no fixed boundaries and may need to widen and shrink moment by moment as the situation demands. (Those brave students who—in supporting the ethical necessity of a ceasefire—find themselves at painful odds with family, friends, faith, or community have already made this calculation.) This flexibility can also have the positive long-term political effect of allowing us to comprehend that, although our duty to the weakest is permanent, the role of “the weakest” is not an existential matter independent of time and space but, rather, a contingent situation, continually subject to change. By contrast, there is a dangerous rigidity to be found in the idea that concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages is somehow in opposition to, or incompatible with, the demand for a ceasefire. Surely a ceasefire—as well as being an ethical necessity—is also in the immediate absolute interest of the hostages, a fact that cannot be erased by tearing their posters off walls.

Part of the significance of a student protest is the ways in which it gives young people the opportunity to insist upon an ethical principle while still being, comparatively speaking, a more rational force than the supposed adults in the room, against whose crazed magical thinking they have been forced to define themselves. The equality of all human life was never a self-evident truth in racially segregated America. There was no way to “win” in Vietnam. Hamas will not be “eliminated.” The more than seven million Jewish human beings who live in the gap between the river and the sea will not simply vanish because you think that they should. All of that is just rhetoric. Words. Cathartic to chant, perhaps, but essentially meaningless. A ceasefire, meanwhile, is both a potential reality and an ethical necessity. The monstrous and brutal mass murder of more than eleven hundred people, the majority of them civilians, dozens of them children, on October 7th, has been followed by the monstrous and brutal mass murder (at the time of writing) of a reported fourteen thousand five hundred children. And many more human beings besides, but it’s impossible not to notice that the sort of people who take at face value phrases like “surgical strikes” and “controlled military operation” sometimes need to look at and/or think about dead children specifically in order to refocus their minds on reality.

To send the police in to arrest young people peacefully insisting upon a ceasefire represents a moral injury to us all. To do it with violence is a scandal. How could they do less than protest, in this moment? They are putting their own bodies into the machine. They deserve our support and praise. As to which postwar political arrangement any of these students may favor, and on what basis they favor it—that is all an argument for the day after a ceasefire. One state, two states, river to the sea—in my view, their views have no real weight in this particular moment, or very little weight next to the significance of their collective action, which (if I understand it correctly) is focussed on stopping the flow of money that is funding bloody murder, and calling for a ceasefire, the political euphemism that we use to mark the end of bloody murder. After a ceasefire, the criminal events of the past seven months should be tried and judged, and the infinitely difficult business of creating just, humane, and habitable political structures in the region must begin anew. Right now: ceasefire. And, as we make this demand, we might remind ourselves that a ceasefire is not, primarily, a political demand. Primarily, it is an ethical one.

But it is in the nature of the political that we cannot even attend to such ethical imperatives unless we first know the political position of whoever is speaking. (“Where do you stand on Israel/Palestine?”) In these constructed narratives, there are always a series of shibboleths, that is, phrases that can’t be said, or, conversely, phrases that must be said. Once these words or phrases have been spoken ( river to the sea, existential threat, right to defend, one state, two states, Zionist, colonialist, imperialist, terrorist ) and one’s positionality established, then and only then will the ethics of the question be attended to (or absolutely ignored). The objection may be raised at this point that I am behaving like a novelist, expressing a philosophy without a politics, or making some rarefied point about language and rhetoric while people commit bloody murder. This would normally be my own view, but, in the case of Israel/Palestine, language and rhetoric are and always have been weapons of mass destruction.

It is in fact perhaps the most acute example in the world of the use of words to justify bloody murder, to flatten and erase unbelievably labyrinthine histories, and to deliver the atavistic pleasure of violent simplicity to the many people who seem to believe that merely by saying something they make it so. It is no doubt a great relief to say the word “Hamas” as if it purely and solely described a terrorist entity. A great relief to say “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people” as they stand in front of you. A great relief to say “Zionist colonialist state” and accept those three words as a full and unimpeachable definition of the state of Israel, not only under the disastrous leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu but at every stage of its long and complex history, and also to hear them as a perfectly sufficient description of every man, woman, and child who has ever lived in Israel or happened to find themselves born within it. It is perhaps because we know these simplifications to be impossible that we insist upon them so passionately. They are shibboleths; they describe a people, by defining them against other people—but the people being described are ourselves. The person who says “We must eliminate Hamas” says this not necessarily because she thinks this is a possible outcome on this earth but because this sentence is the shibboleth that marks her membership in the community that says that. The person who uses the word “Zionist” as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as it meant in 1890 or 1901 or 1920—that person does not so much bring definitive clarity to the entangled history of Jews and Palestinians as they successfully and soothingly draw a line to mark their own zone of interest and where it ends. And while we all talk, carefully curating our shibboleths, presenting them to others and waiting for them to reveal themselves as with us or against us—while we do all that, bloody murder.

And now here we are, almost at the end of this little stream of words. We’ve arrived at the point at which I must state clearly “where I stand on the issue,” that is, which particular political settlement should, in my own, personal view, occur on the other side of a ceasefire. This is the point wherein—by my stating of a position—you are at once liberated into the simple pleasure of placing me firmly on one side or the other, putting me over there with those who lisp or those who don’t, with the Ephraimites, or with the people of Gilead. Yes, this is the point at which I stake my rhetorical flag in that fantastical, linguistical, conceptual, unreal place—built with words—where rapes are minimized as needs be, and the definition of genocide quibbled over, where the killing of babies is denied, and the precision of drones glorified, where histories are reconsidered or rewritten or analogized or simply ignored, and “Jew” and “colonialist” are synonymous, and “Palestinian” and “terrorist” are synonymous, and language is your accomplice and alibi in all of it. Language euphemized, instrumentalized, and abused, put to work for your cause and only for your cause, so that it does exactly and only what you want it to do. Let me make it easy for you. Put me wherever you want: misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward. It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay. The only thing that has any weight in this particular essay is the dead. ♦

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By David Remnick

Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City, said that ever since his first Covid shot, standing up has sent his heart racing. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Apoorva Mandavilli

Apoorva Mandavilli spent more than a year talking to dozens of experts in vaccine science, policymakers and people who said they had experienced serious side effects after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

• Published May 3, 2024 Updated May 4, 2024

Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.

She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.

“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch .

The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths . Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects . And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses .

Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600 .

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

In interviews and email exchanges conducted over several months, federal health officials insisted that serious side effects were extremely rare and that their surveillance efforts were more than sufficient to detect patterns of adverse events.

“Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have safely received Covid vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history,” Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

Federal officials and independent scientists face a number of challenges in identifying potential vaccine side effects.

The nation’s fragmented health care system complicates detection of very rare side effects, a process that depends on an analysis of huge amounts of data. That’s a difficult task when a patient may be tested for Covid at Walgreens, get vaccinated at CVS, go to a local clinic for minor ailments and seek care at a hospital for serious conditions. Each place may rely on different health record systems.

There is no central repository of vaccine recipients, nor of medical records, and no easy to way to pool these data. Reports to the largest federal database of so-called adverse events can be made by anyone, about anything. It’s not even clear what officials should be looking for.

“I mean, you’re not going to find ‘brain fog’ in the medical record or claims data, and so then you’re not going to find” a signal that it may be linked to vaccination, Dr. Woodcock said. If such a side effect is not acknowledged by federal officials, “it’s because it doesn’t have a good research definition,” she added. “It isn’t, like, malevolence on their part.”

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

‘I’m Not Real’

Patients who believe they experienced serious side effects say they have received little support or acknowledgment.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City who has worked on clinical trials for H.I.V. and Covid, said that ever since his first Covid shot, merely standing up sent his heart racing — a symptom suggestive of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome , a neurological disorder that some studies have linked to both Covid and, much less often, vaccination .

He also experienced stinging pain in his eyes, mouth and genitals, which has abated, and tinnitus, which has not.

“I can’t get the government to help me,” Mr. Barcavage said of his fruitless pleas to federal agencies and elected representatives. “I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.”

Renee France, 49, a physical therapist in Seattle, developed Bell’s palsy — a form of facial paralysis, usually temporary — and a dramatic rash that neatly bisected her face. Bell’s palsy is a known side effect of other vaccines, and it has been linked to Covid vaccination in some studies.

But Dr. France said doctors were dismissive of any connection to the Covid vaccines. The rash, a bout of shingles, debilitated her for three weeks, so Dr. France reported it to federal databases twice.

“I thought for sure someone would reach out, but no one ever did,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence.

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

“If they have done studies, those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added. In despair that he might “never hear silence again,” he has sought solace in meditation and his religious faith.

Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University, said his tinnitus and racing heart lasted about a week after each shot. “It’s very similar to what I experienced during acute Covid, back in March of 2020,” Dr. Creech said.

Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.

“Regardless, when our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can,” Dr. Creech said.

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects .

Two are associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States: Guillain-Barré syndrome , a known side effect of other vaccines , including the flu shot; and a blood-clotting disorder.

The C.D.C. also links mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to heart inflammation, or myocarditis, especially in boys and young men. And the agency warns of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, which can occur after any vaccination.

Listening for Signals

Agency scientists are monitoring large databases containing medical information on millions of Americans for patterns that might suggest a hitherto unknown side effect of vaccination, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“We toe the line by reporting the signals that we think are real signals and reporting them as soon as we identify them as signals,” he said. The agency’s systems for monitoring vaccine safety are “pretty close” to ideal, he said.

Those national surveillance efforts include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is the largest database, but also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.

The system contains roughly one million reports regarding Covid vaccination, the vast majority for mild events, according to the C.D.C.

Federal researchers also comb through databases that combine electronic health records and insurance claims on tens of millions of Americans. The scientists monitor the data for 23 conditions that may occur following Covid vaccination. Officials remain alert to others that may pop up, Dr. Daskalakis said.

But there are gaps, some experts noted. The Covid shots administered at mass vaccination sites were not recorded in insurance claims databases, for example, and medical records in the United States are not centralized.

“It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system,” said Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing whether the nation’s vaccine-safety surveillance was sufficient, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I do believe we could do better.”

In some countries with centralized health care systems, officials have actively sought out reports of serious side effects of Covid vaccines and reached conclusions that U.S. health authorities have not.

In Hong Kong, the government analyzed centralized medical records of patients after vaccination and paid people to come forward with problems. The strategy identified “a lot of mild cases that other countries would not otherwise pick up,” said Ian Wong, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the nation’s vaccine safety efforts.

That included the finding that in rare instances — about seven per million doses — the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a bout of shingles serious enough to require hospitalization.

The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

Are the two linked? It’s not clear. As many as one in four adults has some form of tinnitus. Stress, anxiety, grief and aging can lead to the condition, as can infections like Covid itself and the flu.

There is no test or scan for tinnitus, and scientists cannot easily study it because the inner ear is tiny, delicate and encased in bone, said Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an otolaryngologist at Stanford University.

Still, an analysis of health records from nearly 2.6 million people in the United States found that about 0.04 percent , or about 1,000, were diagnosed with tinnitus within three weeks of their first mRNA shot. In March, researchers in Australia published a study linking tinnitus and vertigo to the vaccines .

The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but “at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines,” the agency said in a statement.

Despite surveillance efforts, U.S. officials were not the first to identify a significant Covid vaccine side effect: myocarditis in young people receiving mRNA vaccines. It was Israeli authorities who first raised the alarm in April 2021. Officials in the United States said at the time that they had not seen a link.

On May 22, 2021, news broke that the C.D.C. was investigating a “relatively few” cases of myocarditis. By June 23, the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS had risen to more than 1,200 — a hint that it is important to tell doctors and patients what to look for.

Later analyses showed that the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition, is highest after a second dose of an mRNA Covid vaccine in adolescent males aged 12 to 17 years.

In many people, vaccine-related myocarditis is transient. But some patients continue to experience pain, breathlessness and depression, and some show persistent changes on heart scans . The C.D.C. has said there were no confirmed deaths related to myocarditis, but in fact there have been several accounts of deaths reported post-vaccination .

Pervasive Misinformation

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research .

But the National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted. William Murphy, a cancer researcher who worked at the N.I.H. for 12 years, has been prodding federal health officials to initiate these studies since 2021.

The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

A deeper understanding of possible side effects, and who is at risk for them, could have implications for the design of future vaccines, or may indicate that for some young and healthy people, the benefit of Covid shots may no longer outweigh the risks — as some European countries have determined.

Thorough research might also speed assistance to thousands of Americans who say they were injured.

The federal government has long run the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program , designed to compensate people who suffer injuries after vaccination. Established more than three decades ago, the program sets no limit on the amounts awarded to people found to have been harmed.

But Covid vaccines are not covered by that fund because Congress has not made them subject to the excise tax that pays for it. Some lawmakers have introduced bills to make the change.

Instead, claims regarding Covid vaccines go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program . Intended for public health emergencies, this program has narrow criteria to pay out and sets a limit of $50,000, with stringent standards of proof.

It requires applicants to prove within a year of the injury that it was “the direct result” of getting the Covid vaccine, based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The program had only four staff members at the beginning of the pandemic, and now has 35 people evaluating claims. Still, it has reviewed only a fraction of the 13,000 claims filed, and has paid out only a dozen.

Dr. Ilka Warshawsky, a 58-year-old pathologist, said she lost all hearing in her right ear after a Covid booster shot. But hearing loss is not a recognized side effect of Covid vaccination.

The compensation program for Covid vaccines sets a high bar for proof, she said, yet offers little information on how to meet it: “These adverse events can be debilitating and life-altering, and so it’s very upsetting that they’re not acknowledged or addressed.”

Dr. Zimmerman, the neuroscientist, submitted her application in October 2021 and provided dozens of supporting medical documents. She received a claim number only in January 2023.

In adjudicating her claim for workers’ compensation, Washington State officials accepted that Covid vaccination caused her injury, but she has yet to get a decision from the federal program.

One of her therapists recently told her she might never be able to live independently again.

“That felt like a devastating blow,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “But I’m trying not to lose hope there will someday be a treatment and a way to cover it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

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