Domestic Violence Has Become a Mental Health Crisis in the Time of Covid-19
As our nation started locking down by Mid-March 2020 due to Covid-19, mental health clinicians started to communicate with each other through online platforms and sharing increasing concerns about our patients forced to stayed at home with partners that were already showing abusive patterns of behavior.
We knew that the stressors of being together at home longer hours, children not attending school, isolation from friends and family members, economic difficulties, health services focused of pandemic victims, and social services hard to reach, domestic violence will become a pandemic within a pandemic.
We immediately offered our patients Telehealth services, and we were able to support them when they needed support, to listen to them when nobody else was able to listen, and as a link of information and connectivity with the resources they needed.
Mental health providers were increasingly concern for the domestic violence victims that didn’t have a person or service to reach out. We contacted local, State, and Federal authorities with our apprehensions, and we called for urgent action to confront the rise of domestic violence.
Research has shown that victims of domestic violence present clinical posttraumatic stress depression, and anxiety. In addition, victims develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that include substance abuse and suicidality.
Erika Sussman, executive director of the Center for Survivor Advocacy and Justice shared to journalist Jeffrey Kluger that “the rates of abuse increased dramatically to about 50% and higher for those marginalize by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship status, and cognitive physical ability.”
In the understanding that domestic violence victims in the time of Covid-19 are facing long term mental health challenges that will take a tremendous human and economic toll to the present and future generations, the government announced to Americans during the Domestic Violence Awareness Month Proclamation the commitment of a $500 million in grant programs to address domestic violence.
We know we need tailored shelters, education programs, safety plans, law protection, and technology based mental health services. Next step is to identify and develop multidisciplinary, inclusive, modern strategies to support domestic violence victims during this devastating Covid-19 and its aftermath.
In you are in crisis, contact:
The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or www.TheHotline.org
Please for more resources visit the National Coalition Against Violence’s website at www.ncadv.org.
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