Recognizing Domestic Violence Health Article

Domestic violence is behavior someone uses to control a spouse, partner, date, or elderly relative through fear and intimidation. It can involve emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, as well as threats and isolation. In most cases, men are the abusers.

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, abuse can show itself in the following ways:

• Physical battering. The attacks can range from bruising to punching to life-threatening choking or use of weapons. A problem often begins with threats, name-calling, and/or harm to objects or pets, but escalates into more serious attacks.

• Sexual abuse. A person is forced to have sexual intercourse with the abuser or take part in unwanted sexual activity.

• Psychological battering. Psychological violence can include constant verbal abuse, harassment, excessive possessiveness, isolating the victim from friends and family, withholding money, destruction of personal property, and stalking. The person may accuse the victim of being stupid, ugly, or unfaithful, or of having another fault.

Clues to violence

The following signs often appear before abuse occurs and can be a clue to a potential problem:

• Violent family life. People who grow up in families in which they were abused as children, or in which one parent beat the other, learn that violence is "normal" behavior.

• Use of force or violence to solve problems. A person who has a criminal record for violence, gets into fights, or likes to act tough is likely to act the same way with his or her partner and children. Warning signs include having a quick temper, overreacting to little problems and frustrations, cruelty to animals, destroying or damaging objects that others value, punching walls, or throwing things when upset.

• Alcohol or drug abuse. Drinking and/or drug problems may lead to violence, particularly if the person refuses to admit a problem and get help.

• Jealous of friends and family. An abuser may keep tabs on the abused person, wanting to know where the person is at all times, or wants the person to spend most of his or her time with the abuser. The abuser makes it difficult for the person to find or keep a job or go to school.

• Access to guns or other weapons. The person may threaten to use a weapon.

• Expecting orders or advice to be followed. The abuser becomes angry if the abused person doesn't fulfill his or her wishes or if the abused person can't anticipate his or her wants. The abuser withholds money from the abused person.

• Extreme emotional highs and lows. The person can be extremely kind one day and extremely cruel the next.

• The abused person fears the abuser's anger. The abused person changes her behavior because she is afraid of the consequences of a fight.

• Rough treatment. The abuser has used physical force trying to get the other person to do something, or threatens the other person or the children.

If someone you are with exhibits these behaviors, or you know of someone doing so with a family member or friend, talk with a domestic abuse counselor or another therapist about the situation. If you're in immediate danger, call 911 without delay.

Abusers don't fit a particular character type. They may appear charming or they may seem to be angry. What is common among abusers are the signs listed above.