Spousal violence: a study on stress coping styles and strategies.

Interesting research on maltreatment that you should know about.

Violence has been part of human history. This phenomenon is as old as the first human instinct to dominate, to survive. Nowadays, it has been sought to conceptualize and problematize it due to the various afflictions derived from it.. In recent centuries, humanity has been violated on an unprecedented scale. The emergence of different ideologies of hatred has stained with Blood the chronology of the human being, nevertheless there is still more behind this dark panorama.

Spousal violence: definition and context

The specter of violence is becoming more tangible every day. It creeps through the streets, spreads through the media, bubbles up in workplaces, schools and homes. The number of investigations on the subject, carried out by psychology professionals and experts in the field, has increased in recent decades due to the need to generate new knowledge of both its causes and consequences. It is evident that it is no longer enough to reflect on the problem; psychological and social theories must be created to prevent and correct this evil that afflicts society as a whole. This requires a better understanding of the reality that is so complex today, directing efforts towards pertinent actions that not only prevent, but also give rise to a reformulation of the social paradigms surrounding violence.

A study entitled "Unmasking spousal violence: relationship between stress coping and the prolongation or termination of a devastating idyll", analyzed violence and its types according to the categorization established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the private sphere and addressed 3 variants of violence: family violence, intimate partner or spousal violence and gender-based violence, focusing mainly on spousal violence.

According to WHO (2014), systematic mistreatment between two or more family members is called family or intrafamily violenceSpousal violence refers to the behavior of a partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, and gender-based violence is that which emphasizes violence against women because they are female, although some specialists differ on the latter, which will be discussed in more detail below.

The consequences of conjugal violence

Now, what are the repercussions of acts of violence on the subjects of the study? Violence, in all its expressions (psychological, physical, economic, patrimonial, sexual and symbolic), has observable consequences at both the social and individual levels.

At the individual level they manifest themselves physically and psychologically. The individual level has in turn serious repercussions on the social aspect; where there are serious affectations in education, economy and politics. Both individually and socially speaking, violence directly affects the quality of life. Psychologically speaking, quality of life is modulated by different factors such as: anxiety, depression, expectations towards treatment, social support and stress in its different modalities.

The word stress has become so common nowadays that its true effect has been neglected. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), stress is defined by Baum as "...[any] upsetting emotional experience that is accompanied by predictable biochemical, physiological and behavioral changes". When faced with a stressful situation, individuals tend to resort to certain actions that allow them to regain control of the situation and reduce the level of stress; this is known as coping.

The coping is, then, any resource used by the affected person to cope with the stressful event; these resources may be cognitive or behavioral. Coping resources are made up of thoughts, attitudes, omissions, reinterpretations, behaviors, etc. The individual in question can develop or adopt different types of coping, and it is also necessary to mention that not all people react in the same way to certain situations.

The Occurrence of Stress in Spousal Violence: A Study

Studies that allow us to learn about stress coping in both men and women suffering from spousal violence are limited. Studying coping and coping styles will allow us to decipher other methods of prevention or guidance in dealing with spousal violence. For this reason, the aim of this study was to identify the frequency of stress coping styles and strategies used by male and female victims of spousal violence, as well as the relationship between these styles and strategies.and the relationship between these and the permanence or termination of the relationship.

Among the unnamed voices and the invisible ones that are still present, there were 5 subjects who constituted the case studies; 3 of the female sex and 2 of the male sex. At the beginning there were more subjects who had already given their approval to be interviewed, but when faced with the questions of the questionnaires they chose to abstain from participating. There were some who, although they preferred not to participate, asked for a little time simply to tell their story, which were not included in the study because the other instruments had not been completed.

Nuancing: women and men can suffer conjugal violence.

It is also necessary to point out that although statistically women are the ones who suffer most from violence in all spheres, for this study we also included men because of the importance this represents for the search for greater gender equity in society. This is because it is not possible to speak of gender equity when attention is paid to either of the two sexes, leaving violence against men invisible only because of their masculine condition. Spousal violence, whether it occurs from man to woman, woman to man, man to man or woman to woman, is reprehensible and has no place in society.

The study subjects were selected by availability in terms of sex, orientation, age and schooling. In terms of age, they ranged from 25 to 55 years old. All of them were active in the labor market and their levels of education ranged from high school to postgraduate studies. This allowed the research to highlight the fact that there is a diversity of factors that influence spousal violence, including social and cultural factors.

It is also important to comment that when talking about violence, the mind tends to invoke or visualize it graphically with broken lips and violet eyelids, however, according not only to the results of this research but also based on the results published by INEGI in the ENDIREH 2011, of the four types of violence, the most representative is emotional or psychological violence due to its high incidence rates. It is due to the daily occurrence of psychological violence that it has become naturalized, minimizing the risks it entails, which were mentioned above and which allow for the progression between the different phases of violence.

The results

Within the ENDIREH questionnaire used for the interview, there was a section called opinion on gender roles, which mainly refers to the most common stereotypes related to the female and male sex. In the results of this section, 100% of those interviewed concluded that they disagreed that women should obey everything they are ordered to do, that men should bear all the responsibility for household expenses and that it is a woman's obligation to have sexual relations with her partner. Also, 100% of the subjects agreed that childcare should be shared by the couple and that women should be able to work and earn money. This allows us to see that absolutely all the interviewees sought a politically correct response, avoiding providing an answer that was in accordance with their true opinion or reality. In this case, it is recommended that the ENDIREH rethink the questions in this section. For the purposes of this research, it was not necessary to develop another instrument to supplement this section because these data were considered secondary and were not taken into consideration for the validation or refutation of the premises of the research, since gender stereotypes are not part of the objects of study.

Another important but alarming piece of information was found during the interview when the subjects of the study expressed their dissatisfaction with the attention they received when they requested help from the corresponding authorities and family members. Both men and women reported that when they asked for support, they were denied or the process was extremely long.

In relation to coping strategies and coping styles, both sexes had almost similar proportions in terms of self-blame strategies, with only .2 points difference between their means. This means that both men and women have a similar tendency to blame themselves for the acts of violence perpetrated against them. This type of strategy is very dangerous since to a certain extent it justifies spousal violence, allowing the victim to stoically endure the abuse. At the other extreme are the strategies of acceptance and ventilation, which have a difference of 3.4 and 3 points, respectively, with men employing more of these types of resources.

Some conclusions

Synthesizing, from the results obtained it can be concluded that the subjects, men and women, who are victims of spousal violence tend to use both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping styles; however, there is a difference in the frequency of the strategies used between men and women, with a greater recurrence of problem-focused styles on the part of women and a greater incidence of emotion-focused styles on the part of men. This means that women have a greater recurrence of actively coping with spousal violence, seeking to eliminate or diminish the effects of the violence and the violence itself, while men cope with it in an inactive manner and with strategies that are more oriented to the emotional and their interpretation of the problem.

The fact that men were more likely to use coping styles focused on the problem suggests that the mediatization of stereotypes and men's roles lead them to cope with stress in a passive manner, in comparison with women, where partner abuse is less accepted on a daily basis.

With regard to the results of the coping styles used by the subjects of the study, it was observed that those individuals who decide to remain in a violent relationship have a greater repertoire of strategies that allow them to cope with the problem, compared to those who decide to remain in a violent relationship.compared to those who decided to terminate the relationship. It was also demonstrated that of the subjects studied, those who used more resources within the coping style to the problem were more likely to terminate their relationship as can be seen in the following table.

According to Díaz-Aguado, psychology has the power and the duty to play a leading role as a substantial agent in the fight against violence. One of the essential factors is the representation of violence, that is, "the representation that a person or a people has of violence and its possible victims plays a decisive role in the risk of exercising it" (Díaz-Aguado, 1999, p.415). This is why this study sought to show that spousal violence is not inevitable. Revealing the multiple faces of spousal violence as well as the coping styles and strategies employed by the victims is an attempt to reconfigure the current representation of intimate partner violence. For the time being, the road against violence is long and narrow, but each step taken is not a step in vain.