Intimate Partner Violence

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Pages: 2

Intimate partner violence varies in severity, types, frequency, and crosses different social, cultural and economic boundaries. As a result, it has a severe impact on women’s well-being and mental health. Intimate partner violence occurs in many forms; financial, sexual, verbal, physical and emotional. However, the psychological impact that victims experience has long-term effects that have the potential to develop into mental health issues. Intimate partner violence is a universal phenomenon and women continue to suffer silently as a result. Due to isolation women who experience IPV are often unable to receive any social support from the people around them. Furthermore, women often experience repeat victimization because it takes numerous attempts before a woman can permanently leave an abusive partner. As a result, abused women tend to internalize destructive behaviour that is often harmful to their emotional well-being. …show more content…
Men use violence to exercise their dominance and control over their subordinates which traces back archaic gender roles. This dominance and control results in isolation in the victims that increases the likelihood of them developing depression. Depression can then manifest itself into substance dependency to cope with the abusive behaviour or suicidal ideation to escape the abuse. However, the general systems theory blames institutions instead of the perpetrator of intimate partner violence. Therefore, intimate partner violence is a bi-product of a broken system. Furthermore, normalizing intimate partner violence in the family desensitize and encourage the negative