Women, Religiosity, and Intimate Partner Violence
Intimate partner violence has long been a pervasive issue for women, occurring across all ethnicities, socioeconomic status, religions, and races. A wide variety of survival skills are employed by these women to help cope with the abuse they are experiencing. Despite the breadth of personal differences, these victims commonly utilize religion. Personal religious devotion may strengthen their capacity to survive intimate partner violence and post relationship trauma. This presentation reviews four research trends in personal religious beliefs as a coping strategy. First, women may reach out to clergy members or religious leaders for support and counseling. Moreover, prayer may be a particularly common coping mechanism. In addition, religious coping may be particularly prevalent among African-American and other Black women. In contrast, some researchers argue that personal religious devotion may be an ineffective coping technique, causing barriers to healing. Researchers have found women who rely on their religious beliefs to survive the violence credit a myriad of ways religion helped them. The violence perpetrated by intimate partners leaves lasting psychological trauma for victims. Researchers report that the coping strategies used may help strengthen women’s resilience in these relationships, and help provide additional support in post-traumatic healing. Future directions for research will also be discussed in this presentation, including resources for these victims at religious communities.
PSY 499, Capstone
Mary Ann Winter-Messiers
SPS 100
1:30 – 2 PM