Systemic Factors Explain Differences in Low and High Frequency Shelter Use for Victims of Interpersonal Violence

Author(s):  
Nicole Williams ◽  
Katrina Milaney ◽  
Daniel Dutton ◽  
Wilfreda E. Thurston

Intimate partner violence is detrimental to women and children’s health and social outcomes. In order to identify the complex factors that shape help-seeking behaviour and what places women at highest risk of recurrence of violence and shelter use, it is critical to examine how individual and systemic factors influence shelter use. The Healing Journey Project was a longitudinal study conducted across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to identify the experiences of women who were victims of intimate partner violence. A total of 665 women who had previously experienced IPV were interviewed biannually over a four-year period. Descriptive statistics informed probit regressions that then identified several factors that differentiate single frequency shelter users from high frequency users. The results emphasize the importance of using intersectionality theory to recognize the interplay of multiple factors to showcase the complexity of IPV and how it affects shelter use. The results also emphasize how colonialism’s lasting effects are pervasive, alongside the impacts of poverty, intergenerational abuse and structural barriers to housing and childcare. Implications require changes to policy and government funding to enhance access to gender and culturally safe housing with trauma-informed supports to both intervene and potentially prevent multiple experiences of violence.

Author(s):  
Nicole Williams ◽  
Katrina J. Milaney ◽  
Daniel Dutton ◽  
Wilfreda E. Thurston

Intimate partner violence is detrimental to women and children’s health and social outcomes. In order to identify the complex factors that shape help-seeking behaviour and what places women at highest risk of recurrence of violence and shelter use, it is critical to examine how individual and systemic factors influence shelter use. The Healing Journey Project was a longitudinal study conducted across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to identify the experiences of women who were victims of intimate partner violence. A total of 665 women who had previously experienced IPV were interviewed biannually over a four-year period. Descriptive statistics informed probit regressions that then identified several factors that differentiate single frequency shelter users from high frequency users. The results emphasize the importance of using intersectionality theory to recognize the interplay of multiple factors to showcase the complexity of IPV and how it affects shelter use. The results also emphasize how colonialism’s lasting effects are pervasive, alongside the impacts of poverty, intergenerational abuse and structural barriers to housing and childcare. Implications require changes to policy and government funding to enhance access to gender and culturally safe housing with trauma-informed supports to both intervene and potentially prevent multiple experiences of violence.


Psych ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bishwajit Ghose ◽  
Sanni Yaya

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is recognised as a fundamental violation of women’s human rights and a widespread phenomenon in Africa. Women’s low socioeconomic empowerment, cultural acceptability, and lack of social support exacerbate the health and psychosocial outcomes of IPV among African women. To date, there is no systematic research on IPV and its association with healthcare use among adult women in Uganda. Therefore, we conducted the present study on IPV among Ugandan women of childbearing age (15–49 years). Cross-sectional data on 7536 women were collected from the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS—Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2016). The objectives were to assess the predictors of IPV as well as help-seeking behaviour for victims of IPV. IPV was assessed by women’s experience of physical, emotional and sexual violence and healthcare use was assessed by self-reported medical visits during the last 12 months. Logistic regression methods were used to analyse the data. According to descriptive findings, which showed that more than half of the women reported experiencing any IPV (55.3%, 95%CI = 53.6, 57.0), emotional IPV (41.2%, 95%CI = 39.6, 42.8) was the most prevalent of all three categories, followed by physical (39.3%, 95%CI = 37.7, 40.9) and sexual IPV (22.0%, 95%CI = 20.7, 23.3). In the multivariate analysis, higher age, rural residence, religious background (non-Christian), ethnicity (Banyankore and Itseo), secondary/higher education and husband’s alcohol drinking habit were positively associated with women’s experience of IPV. Husband’s alcohol drinking was found to be a significant barrier to seeking help among those who experienced IPV. In conclusion, our findings suggest a noticeably high prevalence of IPV among Ugandan women. There are important sociodemographic and cultural patterns in the occurrence of IPV that need to be taken into account when designing intervention policies. Special attention should be given to women living with husbands/partners who drink alcohol, as this might increase their odds of experiencing IPV, as well as reduce the likelihood of seeking help.


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Djikanovic ◽  
S. Lo Fo Wong ◽  
H. A. F. M. Jansen ◽  
S. Koso ◽  
S. Simic ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sepali Guruge ◽  
Margareth S. Zanchetta ◽  
Brenda Roche ◽  
Stephanie Pedrotti Lucchese

Intimate partner violence is a global health issue and the most common form of violence experienced by women. This study explored barriers to accessing help to Intimate partner violence related health services among Portuguese-speaking immigrant women in Toronto, Canada. Exploratory study conducted by a survey and focus group discussions with 12 Portuguese-speaking immigrant women. Results clarify the struggles faced by Portuguese-speaking immigrant women and their pathways to care and help-seeking. Participants reported that the fear of being deported, obtaining evidence of abuse, and lack of language-specific services were the key barriers to seeking help. When available, language-specific community-based services, along with faith and religion, were noted as key factors that supported women’s resilience. Nurses who provide care and services to women who are dealing with Intimate partner violence should rethink the scope of their advocacy actions toward addressing these structural barriers by building alliances with organizations to better serve and protect women in such vulnerable situations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110358
Author(s):  
Julie C. Taylor ◽  
Elizabeth A. Bates ◽  
Attilio Colosi ◽  
Andrew J. Creer

Evidence suggests that male victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) are less likely to seek help for their victimization than female victims. Studies exploring barriers to help seeking are relatively scarce in the United Kingdom (UK) and those that have been undertaken across Europe, United States, Canada, and Australia have tended to rely on small samples of help-seeking men who have self-identified as victims of IPV. With a view to include more male victim voices in the literature, an anonymous qualitative questionnaire was distributed via social media. In total, 147 men (85% from the UK) who self-identified as being subject to abuse from their female partners, completed the questionnaire. The data was subjected to a deductive thematic analysis and one superordinate and two overarching themes were identified. The superordinate theme was stigmatized gender and the two overarching themes (subthemes in parentheses) were barriers prohibiting help seeking (status and credibility, health and well-being) and responses to initial help seeking (discreditation, exclusion/isolation, and helpfulness). The findings are discussed in the context of Overstreet and Quinn’s (2013) interpersonal violence and stigma model and findings from previous research. The conclusions and recommendations promote education and training and advocate a radical change to policy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solveig Lelaurain ◽  
Pierluigi Graziani ◽  
Grégory Lo Monaco

Abstract. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global social concern: many women are affected by this phenomenon and by the difficulty of putting an end to it. This review of the literature aims to identify help-seeking facilitating and inhibiting factors in response to IPV. It was carried out on the PsycINFO and Medline databases using the following keywords: “intimate partner violence,” “domestic violence,” “help-seeking,” and “help-seeking barrier.” Ninety out of 771 eligible publications were included on the basis of inclusion criteria. The results highlight that (1) research on this phenomenon is very recent and underdeveloped in Europe, (2) theoretical and conceptual frameworks are poorly developed and extended, (3) there is a significant impact of violence characteristics (e.g., severity, type) on help-seeking, and (4) help-seeking is a complex and multifactorial process influenced by a wide range of factors simultaneously individual and social. To conclude, these findings lead us to propose a psychosocial conceptualization of the help-seeking process by indicating how the levels of explanation approach in social psychology can be applied to this field of research in order to increase our understanding of this phenomenon.


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