TRAUMA EXPERIENCE IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Domestic violence is a widespread phenomenon in the United States. Although domestic violence assumes several forms, most victims of domestic violence experience physical trauma and secondary outcomes stemming from the trauma experience (Feldhaus, 2001). This paper reviews the trauma experience in domestic violence.
There are several definitions of domestic violence. One definition is that domestic violence includes all violence occurring within a home. The Family Violence Prevention Fund defines domestic violence as a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors ù including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion ù that adults or adolescents use against their intimate partners (Feldhaus, 2001).
Most frequently, however, domestic violence refers to abuse occurring between intimate partners or ex-partners. The nature of abuse can be physical, emotional, psychological, verbal, and sexual (Feldhaus, 2001).
Physical trauma is a serious outcome of domestic violence. Physical trauma victims of domestic violence frequently are referred to as battered women. One definition of a battered woman is a woman who has experienced serious or repeated injury from the man with whom she lives. Another perspective delineates a cycle of battering comprising four phases, and contends that, for battering to be present, a woman must go through the battering cycle twice. An alternative definition is the battered wife syndrome, which is described as a symptom complex of violence in which a woman has, at any time, received deliberate, severe, and repeated (more than three times) injury from her husband, with the minimum injury level being severe bruising (Hastings, 2001).
Generally, women are considered battered if they have suffered one or more episodes of battery from a male partner or ex-partner. A range of behaviors are defined as battering. These behaviors i...