Violence towards girls is a serious human rights violation that impacts one in three girls worldwide and has profound and overlapping impacts on girls’s bodily and psychological well being (World Well being Organisation, 2021).
Coercive management might be seen to lie on the coronary heart of intimate companion violence and has been described because the “golden thread” that ties collectively a number of incidents of violence and abuse (Myhill & Hohl, 2019, p. 4477). This sample of behaviour creates an surroundings of threats, humiliation, intimidation and management that harms or frightens an individual and isolates them from assist and different sources (Milligan, 2022). It might contain ways resembling monitoring actions, enforced social isolation, and restriction of entry to monetary sources, employment, schooling, or medical care.
Though coercive management is a crucial a part of intimate companion violence (IPV), and there is legal recognition of coercive control in England and Wales since 2015, it’s not often studied and fewer properly understood in analysis literature (Oram et al., 2022). This research aimed to discover girls’s experiences of coercive management and the way they felt coercive management impacted their psychological well being.
Coercive management creates an surroundings of threats, humiliation, intimidation and management, but it’s not often studied and fewer properly understood than bodily violence.
Strategies
This was a qualitative research, which explored the views of 16 girls who had skilled coercive management and who had accessed home abuse providers in Australia. The analysis crew sought moral approval from the College of Melbourne and developed a misery protocol.
To recruit contributors, flyers promoting the mission had been put up on the premises of home violence providers and distributed by e-mail to networks of home violence service suppliers. Contributors had been requested about: (1) experiences of IPV normally, (2) coercive management specifically and (3) the psychological well being impacts of IPV.
Through the evaluation, researchers generated themes from the contributors’ phrases via categorising contributors’ descriptions of their experiences utilizing an method known as thematic evaluation (Braun and Clarke, 2006). They met commonly to debate these codes and resolve disagreements about codes and themes between crew members. The authors additionally report producing ‘latent’ codes and themes, which seize theoretical concepts and assumptions and should in a roundabout way mirror what contributors stated.
Outcomes
Contributors had been 16 cisgender girls, aged between 26 and 62, who recognized as heterosexual and had skilled abuse by a male intimate companion. Most (15/16) contributors had been separated from their abusive companion on the time of the interview and the lengths of abusive relationships ranged between 5 months to over 40 years. The findings are reported in two components: (1) experiences of coercive management and (2) the trauma and psychological well being impacts of coercive management.
1. Experiences of coercive management
Ladies reported a variety of various behaviours from their companion, together with monitoring, monitoring telephones and gadgets, isolating the survivor from family and friends, proscribing of autonomy, controlling behaviours, gaslighting (manipulating somebody into questioning their very own notion of actuality), utilizing intimidation and threatening behaviours, manipulating, threatening suicide, manipulating household and associates, jealousy, denigration and humiliation, monetary abuse, irresponsible spending and playing and exploiting girls as free labour.
Entrapment and insidiousness
Contributors described feeling trapped within the coercive controlling relationship. Ladies highlighted that abusive companions used girls’s social and financial circumstances, experiences of psychological misery, or their function as mother and father to make it harder for them to depart the connection. Contributors additionally described coercive management as remaining hidden by slowly and progressively growing in hurt (which the authors check with as ‘insidiousness’). This refined and insidious nature of coercive management was de-stabilising as a result of survivors couldn’t level to a transparent ‘fallacious’, significantly when there was no bodily violence.
2. The trauma and psychological well being impacts of coercive management
All girls reported that coercive management had lasting impacts on their psychological well being. Ladies described psychological abuse as extra dangerous than bodily violence as a consequence of “the continuing menace” it created and the “fixed chipping away on the girls’s sense of self” (p. 579). Ladies reported experiencing difficulties in accessing assist for coercive management, significantly when there was no bodily violence, which led to growing misery. Ladies additionally reported long-term bodily well being impacts as a result of ongoing stress related to coercive management, together with power ache and fatigue.
Few girls reported receiving formal psychological well being diagnoses. The contributors described a variety of experiences of psychological misery. These included recurrent distressing reminiscences and nightmares, dissociation, self-blame, guilt and disgrace, anxiousness, anger, hypervigilance, and difficulties concentrating.
Coercive management concerned a “fixed chipping away on the girls’s sense of self” (p. 579).
Conclusions
The authors concluded that entrapment and insidious traits of coercive management are central to the psychological misery it causes. They be aware that there’s an pressing want for trauma- and violence-informed psychosocial assist for girls who’ve skilled coercive management.
The hidden, refined, insidious nature of coercive management is central to the psychological misery it causes.
Strengths and limitations
This research makes an essential contribution to a area that always overlooks the impacts of non-physical types of violence and abuse. The findings on what coercive management appears to be like like and mechanisms via which coercive management might result in psychological misery are well-evidenced with quotes.
The authors report that this research was formed by community-based participatory analysis rules, and though they consulted with group members about recruitment and information assortment, survivors had been concerned solely as contributors and weren’t concerned in evaluation or interpretation of findings. This contradicts participatory analysis rules which centre on partnership working (Cargo & Mercer, 2008).
The researchers had been clear about how their background, experiences and beliefs might have formed the analysis, significantly in relation to their private identities and experiences of privilege. This transparency is a key a part of good high quality qualitative analysis, however it’s uncommon to see it’s given a lot (if any) consideration in printed papers (Braun & Clarke, 2021, 2023). Nevertheless, together with a extra detailed dialogue of how the researchers’ skilled assumptions and beliefs formed the evaluation they produced would have strengthened the paper (Braun & Clarke, 2023). Particularly, the researchers recognise that their psychology backgrounds might have “restricted the understanding of the phenomena the contributors described” (p. 574), however their resolution to interpret survivors’ experiences via a biomedical understanding wanted to be explicitly described and defined.
The authors construct an argument for the hyperlinks between coercive management and psychological misery. Within the outcomes part, their interpretations principally mirror intently what survivors stated, amplifying survivors’ voices. Nevertheless, within the dialogue, they re-frame survivors’ descriptions of the psychological well being impacts of coercive management utilizing diagnostic language.
For instance, within the dialogue part, the authors interpret experiences of substance use as being “self-destructive” (p. 580), whereas survivors have argued that this can be a self-protective coping mechanism that reduces misery when confronted with excessive and infrequently long-term and inescapable terror (Sweeney et al., 2018). The authors additionally interpret within the dialogue that survivors had an “incapability to belief” (p. 580), but survivor-led analysis has proven that survivors do have a capability to belief however as a consequence of repeated experiences of betrayal and relational hurt they might want proof of trustworthiness earlier than entrusting (Alyce, Taggart & Turton, 2024).
The diagnostic language utilized by the authors is usually their very own interpretation and infrequently isn’t mirrored within the quotes from survivors. Framing survivors’ experiences via biomedical methods of understanding misery, conflicts with a protracted historical past of feminist scholarship and survivor activism that implies a concentrate on ‘signs’ can pathologise survivors (i.e., find the issue inside them) and miss the contextual and social components at play (Faulkner, 2017; Sweeney et al., 2019; Tseris, 2013; Wasco, 2003). That is significantly essential on condition that the authors declare the research is knowledgeable by feminist analysis rules.
It additionally signifies that the paper focuses on difficulties and didn’t seize survivors’ strengths and the methods they mitigated the affect of coercive management on their psychological well being. The latter is equally essential for the person-centred and trauma-informed psychological well being assist that the authors advocate for within the paper. Involving survivors meaningfully in all levels of the analysis, and significantly the interpretation of the info, would have strengthened this paper by guaranteeing its interpretations aligned with survivors’ priorities and expectations, in addition to the participatory rules that the researchers check with of their strategies.
It can be crucial that intimate companion violence analysis displays survivors’ expectations and priorities.
Implications for observe
Based mostly on these findings and linking them with private expertise and the broader literature, clinicians and practitioners ought to:
- Recognise that psychological ways of coercion and management are simply as, if no more, distressing than bodily ways.
- Perceive that the subtleness of coercive management, significantly when there isn’t a bodily violence, might be very disorientating and make it troublesome for girls to articulate the supply of their misery.
- Be alert to hints or clues that point out that ladies are feeling trapped in a relationship or as if a relationship is progressively and progressively eroding their sense of self and their well-being.
- Perceive that perpetrators might use social, financial, and cultural drawback to entrap and management girls; the facility of coercive management usually lies in perpetrators exploiting social inequality.
We have to recognise that psychological ways of coercion and management are simply as, if no more, distressing than bodily ways.
Assertion of pursuits
My work focuses on amplifying the voices of survivors of violence, trauma and abuse and I perform analysis from the angle of myself having lived expertise. I write this weblog from that place. A part of my work, knowledgeable by lived expertise and dealing with survivors, focuses on ensuring that the language that we use to explain survivors’ experiences of psychological misery aligns with survivors views, priorities, and meanings. This usually means being very cautious that our language doesn’t re-enforce narratives or concepts which will undermine survivors’ personal methods of understanding their difficulties or misery. I wish to make this attitude clear as a result of I recognise that it has formed my interpretation of the strengths and limitations of this paper and my method to scripting this weblog.
Hyperlinks
Main paper
Lohmann, S., Felmingham, Ok., O’Donnell, M., & Cowlishaw, S. (2024). “It’s Like You’re a Living Hostage, and It Never Ends”: A Qualitative Examination of the Trauma and Mental Health Impacts of Coercive Control. Psychology of Ladies Quarterly, 03616843241269941.
Different references
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative analysis in sport, train and well being, 11(4), 589-597.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis?. Qualitative analysis in psychology, 18(3), 328-352.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2023). Toward good practice in thematic analysis: Avoiding common problems and be (com) ing a knowing researcher. Worldwide journal of transgender well being, 24(1), 1-6.
Cargo, M., & Mercer, S. L. (2008). The value and challenges of participatory research: strengthening its practice. Annu. Rev. Public Well being, 29(1), 325-350.
Faulkner, A. (2017). Survivor research and Mad Studies: the role and value of experiential knowledge in mental health research. Incapacity & Society, 32(4), 500-520.
Myhill, A., & Hohl, Ok. (2019). The “golden thread”: Coercive control and risk assessment for domestic violence. Journal of interpersonal violence, 34(21-22), 4477-4497.
Milligan, R. (2022). The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health #IPVmentalhealth. The Psychological Elf, July 2022.
Peeren, S., McLindon, E., & Tarzia, L. (2024). “Counteract the gaslighting”–a thematic analysis of open-ended responses about what women survivors of intimate partner sexual violence need from service providers. BMC girls’s well being, 24(1), 110.
Sweeney, A., Perôt, C., Callard, F., Adenden, V., Mantovani, N., & Goldsmith, L. (2019). Out of the silence: towards grassroots and trauma-informed support for people who have experienced sexual violence and abuse. Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 28(6), 598-602.
Sweeney, A., Filson, B., Kennedy, A., Collinson, L., & Gillard, S. (2018). A paradigm shift: relationships in trauma-informed mental health services. BJPsych advances, 24(5), 319-333.
Tarzia, L. (2021). “It went to the very heart of who I was as a woman”: The invisible impacts of intimate partner sexual violence. Qualitative well being analysis, 31(2), 287-297.
Tarzia, L., & Hegarty, Ok. (2023). “He’d Tell Me I was Frigid and Ugly and Force me to Have Sex with Him Anyway”: Women’s Experiences of Co-Occurring Sexual Violence and Psychological Abuse in Heterosexual Relationships. Journal of interpersonal violence, 38(1-2), 1299-1319.
Tseris, E. J. (2013). Trauma theory without feminism? Evaluating contemporary understandings of traumatized women. Affilia, 28(2), 153-164.
Wasco, S. M. (2003). Conceptualizing the harm done by rape: Applications of trauma theory to experiences of sexual assault. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 4(4), 309-322.
World Well being Group. (2021). Violence against women prevalence estimates, 2018: global, regional and national prevalence estimates for intimate partner violence against women and global and regional prevalence estimates for non-partner sexual violence against women. World Well being Group.
