Intimate partner violence is one of the most common forms of domestic violence and includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and controlling behaviours by an intimate partner.
(Box 1 source: WHO)
Sometimes called “domestic violence”, intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious and widespread problem in which a current or former intimate partner engages in physical, sexual, verbal, or psychological violence or stalking (Breiding et al. 2015). Although most people associate IPV with physical harm, IPV can present itself in many different ways. For example, as opposed to the bruise or black eye that can mark physical abuse, emotional violence is a less-talked-about form of IPV that leaves no physical scar.
This form of abuse includes humiliation, insults, or criticism, and can be just as harmful as physical violence to one’s sense of self-worth. Similarly, psychological violence is another less observable example of IPV that involves intimidation, threats, and causing fear in one’s partner.
Sexual violence, another form of IPV, is far more common in relationships than people realize. Sexual violence can range from unwanted touching and sexual harassment to sexual assault or rape. Reproductive coercion is another type of sexual violence that many may not associate with IPV. This is when a partner tries to control the other’s reproductive choices, such as by banning their use of birth control.
Another less-known form of IPV is financial violence. This type takes the shape of financial control. A person may attempt to control their partner’s money or access to school or to their job. In doing so, the person can lead their partner to become completely dependent on them. IPV is not always obvious, so it is important to be able to recognize its many faces.
Who Experiences IPV?
IPV does not discriminate. It can happen to anyone and in any setting, regardless of gender, class, socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity, race or cultural group. Whether dating, married or living together, whether it’s a straight or same-sex relationship, IPV can occur in any relationship.
The overwhelming global burden of IPV is endured by women, and the most common perpetrators of violence against women are male intimate partners or ex-partners.
WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE
The anthropologist Franciose Heritier, in 1997, defined violence as
"any compulsion of a physical, or psychic nature, which brings with it the terror, flight, misfortune, suffering, or death of an animate being; or any intrusive act which has as its voluntary or involuntary effect the dispossession of another, harm, or destruction of inanimate objects."
Therefore, psychological violence represents, to all intents and purposes, a real form of ill-treatment whose consequences can be just as devastating for those who suffer it, compared to those caused by physical violence. However, compared to the latter, whose signs are often visible, psychological violence often remains hidden, unrecognised or underestimated.
PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE: SOME EXAMPLES
Some examples are insults, accusations, denigrating acts, threats, insults, humiliation, devaluations, social isolation, limitation of freedom, control, prohibition to meet friends and relatives, exclusion from important decisions concerning the family or the couple, lack of assistance in case of illness or need.
These behaviours can vary in frequency and intensity, they can be more or less manifest and explicit, but in any case they do not unfold in a single episode.
As a form of ill-treatment, in fact, psychological violence has a recurring character, it develops over time in a crescendo of severity and can follow a cyclic pattern, in which aggressions alternate with moments of calm and reconciliation.
For the victim it becomes a succession of humiliation and harassment, which may include direct personal insults ("you're ugly", "you're stupid", "you don't understand anything"), devaluations related to social roles ("you're not worth anything as a wife / partner / mother / worker"), devaluations of achievements (in the study or work), ridicule in public, forms of generalized control (monitoring of movements, of relationships, social channels, emails, telephone, passwords, expenses, clothing), accusations and attributions of blame by the abuser with respect to his behaviour ("it's your fault I'm doing this", "if you were different this wouldn't happen"), threats of direct repercussions towards her, her children, or her social network (family, friends, work) if the victim does not obey the abuser's dictates.
GASLIGHTING: WHAT IT IS
One of the forms of psychological violence recently returned to the object of study is the so-called Gaslighting, which is a form of psychological manipulation through which the abuser presents the victim with false information with the intent to make them doubt themselves, their own memory and perception, their ability to analyze and evaluate reality until they feel disoriented, inadequate, or even suspicious of their own sanity.
The term comes from the movie Gaslight (1944) , and so its definition is rather specific: when a person lies for their own gain to another person so repeatedly, and with so much confidence, that the victim begins to doubt their own sanity
Gaslighting can also manifest through the denial that certain episodes have ever happened (including, but not limited to, episodes of mistreatment), or, on the contrary, through the invention that certain events have in fact taken place, and finally it may be acted through the actual staging of unusual, bizarre situations, with the intent to disorient and confuse the victim.
THE EFFECTS OF VIOLENCE
Psychological violence is characterised, therefore, by a pattern of actions that the abuser uses to control and dominate his partner, instilling in her fear, undermining her basic self-esteem, and compromising her perception of her own identity.
The continuous character of psychological violence acted by a partner within an intimate relationship, can lead the victim to feel increasingly inadequate, guilty, incapable.
According to psychiatrist Herman, "Family abuse is comparable in its psychological effects on victims to other traumatizing situations such as natural disasters, wars and kidnappings.
The effects of violence, including psychological violence, on those who suffer it can therefore be devastating. Victims may experience guilt, self-blame, shame, fear, helplessness. They may develop responses of anxiety, stress, depression”.
The consequences of violence can reverberate both in terms of physical and mental health, bearing in mind that the two areas are closelyintertwined.
Research on the topic suggests that a victim of violence - whether physical, sexual or psychological, whether perpetrated by a partner or another person - will experience a health problem more often than a person who has not experienced such violence.
In terms of mental health, those who have been a victims of violence are 5 to 6 times more likely to suffer from depression than those who have not been a victim of violence. They are also more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Unfortunately, even today, psychological violence is a phenomenon that can remain submerged for a long time, often confused with the couple conflict, despite it being an integral part of IPV
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