April 4-6, 2024 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Innovations in Health Communication
Innovations in Health Communication
Abstract: An Evidence-Driven Call for Network-Based Innovations for Primary Prevention Program Against Abuse Among Adult Women
Mental health interventions for survivors of abuse are designed to treat every individual as different. While children who have experienced abuse may engage better with creative or artistic structures of intervention because they are able to express strenuous feelings and traumas that they could not otherwise capture with words (Fellin et al., 2019), women who experience abuse by a stranger process better in group therapies during which they share their stories of abuse and empower one another (Ogbe et al., 2020). Recently, Gilmore and colleagues (2023) found support for video-based interventions in mitigating the development of traumatic stress among women who are sexually assaulted. However, ineffective intervention programs may inadvertently end up doing more harm than good for one’s mental health, road to recovery, and willingness to seek professional help (Craven et al., 2023). For instance, talking to a group of strangers may be overwhelming and thus silencing for some of the survivors.
In this context, the role of social support during and after abuse has found ample attention and empirical support in literature. Particularly, social support interventions are effective in reducing psychological distress for women living in shelters after having experienced intimate partner violence, but program development and implementation without the inputs from women who report IPV further affect the cultural effectiveness of such interventions (Cao et al., 2021; Leyton Zamora et al., 2022). Despite the success of bystander interventions (Feldwisch et al., 2020), bystanders may not always understand the cultural context of abuse which calls for involvement of social support networks before abuse. However, studies have claimed that interpersonal relationship history, trauma, and cultural norms among support sources drive the respondent perceptions about available social support, which may vary by ethnicity (Pir et al., 2022; Yndo et al., 2019) or by geographical locations of same religious groups (Afrouz et al., 2020). Thus, mass sensitization approaches may be ineffective in targeting the available social support of those who end up being abused.
The current study sought to understand how social support and willingness to disclose abuse in the future is reflective of the mental health status of a woman. To this end, we collected data about abuse history, social support and network name generator, willingness of disclosure, and mental health from 123 adult women. The preliminary findings show moderate negative correlations of mental health with lifetime IPV (r= -.211, p=.019), parental abuse (r= -.314, p<.001), and child abuse (r= -.263, p=.019), and positive correlations with number of interpersonal network ties (INTs) reported (r= .303, p<.001) and social support (r= .475, p<.001). Controlling for number of female INTs reported, insignificant partial correlations between lifetime IPV and mental health suggest that type of social support may moderate this relationship. Demographic analysis and tests of interaction to explore robust relationships between study variables is underway. The authors expect support for purposeful and streamlined targeting of existing INTs of women to sensitize them about possible abuse to design a primary prevention intervention against abuse for better mental health outcomes and reducing gendered vulnerabilities.
In this context, the role of social support during and after abuse has found ample attention and empirical support in literature. Particularly, social support interventions are effective in reducing psychological distress for women living in shelters after having experienced intimate partner violence, but program development and implementation without the inputs from women who report IPV further affect the cultural effectiveness of such interventions (Cao et al., 2021; Leyton Zamora et al., 2022). Despite the success of bystander interventions (Feldwisch et al., 2020), bystanders may not always understand the cultural context of abuse which calls for involvement of social support networks before abuse. However, studies have claimed that interpersonal relationship history, trauma, and cultural norms among support sources drive the respondent perceptions about available social support, which may vary by ethnicity (Pir et al., 2022; Yndo et al., 2019) or by geographical locations of same religious groups (Afrouz et al., 2020). Thus, mass sensitization approaches may be ineffective in targeting the available social support of those who end up being abused.
The current study sought to understand how social support and willingness to disclose abuse in the future is reflective of the mental health status of a woman. To this end, we collected data about abuse history, social support and network name generator, willingness of disclosure, and mental health from 123 adult women. The preliminary findings show moderate negative correlations of mental health with lifetime IPV (r= -.211, p=.019), parental abuse (r= -.314, p<.001), and child abuse (r= -.263, p=.019), and positive correlations with number of interpersonal network ties (INTs) reported (r= .303, p<.001) and social support (r= .475, p<.001). Controlling for number of female INTs reported, insignificant partial correlations between lifetime IPV and mental health suggest that type of social support may moderate this relationship. Demographic analysis and tests of interaction to explore robust relationships between study variables is underway. The authors expect support for purposeful and streamlined targeting of existing INTs of women to sensitize them about possible abuse to design a primary prevention intervention against abuse for better mental health outcomes and reducing gendered vulnerabilities.