Silent Epidemic: Domestic Violence

When we hear traumatic brain injury, we often think of a trauma from say….a vehicle accident, or sports, or falls.

It’s time to continue bringing awareness to this silent epidemic…Domestic Violence.

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*Polytrauma and Traumatic Brain Injuries are common with Domestic Violence

* Women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year.

*Less than 20 percent of battered women sought medical treatment following an injury. A significant number of crimes are never even reported for reasons that include the victim’s feeling that nothing can/will be done and the personal nature of the incident.

*The cost of experiencing Domestic Violence includes medical care, mental health services, and lost productivity

*Domestic Violence affecting LGBT individuals continues to be grossly underreported; it is as much as a problem within LGBT communities as it is among heterosexual ones.

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Domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence, is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person[1]

Research on abused women shows that between 40 to 92 percent of victims of domestic violence suffer physical injuries to the head; nearly half of these women report that they have experienced strangulation, according to research published in October 2017 in the Journal of Women’s Health.

DID YOU KNOW?

More than 40 per cent of victims of domestic violence are male.

40% of those reporting serious assaults by current or former partners in the past year were men, and most of their attackers were women.

80 per cent increase in reports from male victims between 2012 and 2016.

Women are as likely as men to be agressors.

Men also make up about 30% of intimate homicide victims, not counting confirmed cases of female self-defense.

Mancries

Female-on-male violence is often assumed to be harmless, given sex differences in size and strength. Yet women may use weapons — including knives, glass, boiling water and various household objects — while men may be held back from defending themselves by cultural taboos against harming woman

Domestic violence against men can take many forms, including emotional, sexual and physical abuse and threats of abuse. It can happen in heterosexual or same-sex relationships.

Abusive relationships always involve an imbalance of power and control. An abuser uses intimidating, hurtful words and behaviors to control his or her partner.

Powerwheel

Men who find themselves as victims of domestic violence are often viewed by and made to feel emasculated and weak. We are told to fight back and ridiculed for “accepting” or “allowing” the abuse. Many people don’t know how to approach the conversation for fear of adding insult to literal injury, or because they simply don’t believe a man can be a victim of domestic violence.

Men are expected to be violent and in control, particularly in control of women, while supressing their emotions and sucking it up whenever life doesn’t go their way. When a man steps outside of this box, he is often ridiculed as weak or as not being a “real” man.
This toxic view of masculinity often leads men to become perpetrators of domestic violence, but when they’re victims, it can prevent them from coming forward. The stigma, and the fear of not being believed, can be so strong that men simply don’t report the abuse.

Abused men have faced widespread biases from police, judges and social workers. Equality should include recognizing women’s potential for abusive behavior.

Claims on both sides should be fairly investigated — without political bias, sexist bias, or cultural bias.

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Domestic violence service providers. Screen everyone who seeks DV services for TBI. A brief screening tool that was designed to be used by professionals who are not TBI experts is the HELPS.2
HELPS is an acronym for the most important questions to ask:
H = Were you hit in the head?
E = Did you seek emergency room treatment?
L = Did you lose consciousness? (Not everyone who suffers a TBI loses consciousness.)
P = Are you having problems with concentration and memory?
S = Did you experience sickness or other physical problems following the injury?
If you suspect a victim has a brain injury, or she answers “yes” to any of these questions, help her get an evaluation by a medical or neuropsychological professional – especially if she has suffered repeated brain injuries, which may decrease her ability to recover and increase her/his risk of death.

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