BOTTLED RAGE
With physical aspects and emotional trauma, domestic violence is really becoming a health matter.
Written by Mary Hudspeth Peters
Violence on the domestic front is thought of as a law enforcement issue by many. A couple gets into a fight, the police are called, and someone goes to jail. But with physical aspects, such as broken bones, and the emotional trauma, the issue really becomes a health matter.
Donna Scott-Tilley, R.N., Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Nursing at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, has been researching the health aspects of domestic violence for several years and began her research by studying women who were victims of domestic violence. “When I got out in the field, visiting places such as Women’s Protective Services (in Lubbock), what I noticed was that these women not only had actual health problems, many also suffered from depression. They were neglecting themselves, and many of their children had behavioral problems.”
In these early stages of her research, Scott-Tilley talked to women who had been abused, and every woman in her sample suffered from depression. “These women all suffered from depression, and they had received no care or counseling from anyone. This validated to me that domestic violence is a health issue,” she said. After that study, she immediately started working with Women’s Protective Services to educate health care professionals about the needs of victims.
Scott-Tilley then began another level of research. She had seen the effects of domestic violence, so she decided to look further into the cause. “I wanted to find out what was happening with the men who batter and what we can do to not have them grow up to be batterers,” she said. “There is very little research on why men grow up thinking they can hit.”
She interviewed 16 men who were convicted of intimate partner violence who were going to the Batterers Intervention Prevention Program (BIPP). In Lubbock, first time offenders go into the program instead of going to jail. The men must pay for the training and follow a rigid set of rules. If they don’t succeed in the program, they are then sent to jail.
Of those men, Scott-Tilley said, she was surprised to find that only about half had previous experience with domestic violence. “Among these men, those who said they experienced or witnessed violence in the home growing up was not that common,” she said.
Scott-Tilley found, however, a strong correlation between alcohol and/or drug use and domestic violence. “The alcohol and drugs
often gave the couple something to fight about, whether it was because of the money spent on the habit, because one of the partners was gone all the time, or because the couple was using together and getting into fights,” she said.
One of the important discoveries in the course of her research was that the couples involved in domestic violence did not possess basic problem-solving skills. “The majority of these couples did not know which lines you don’t cross, they don’t know how to solve basic conflicts,” Scott-Tilley said. Ten of the 16 men said they were just so mad they didn’t know what to do. They would find things to tear up so they wouldn’t hit someone because they just didn’t know how to control their anger, she said.
Scott-Tilley said this explains why placing men in batterers’ intervention programs is more effective than just sending them to jail where they may become more violent. In these programs, they are able to learn coping skills. She said women also are in need of the same training in which they can learn conflict resolution and anger management skills. “All family members are in need of these skills, but if their partners haven’t learned them, one of the basic problems is still present,” she said.
Scott-Tilley said she believes, based on her research, that more money should be spent on prevention programs, like dating violence and drug and alcohol awareness programs. The current practice is to place most of the resources into shelters and programs that deal with violence after it has occurred. “Ultimately, I would like to see prevention programs that are so effective, they eliminate the need for shelters,” she said.
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