M2_A1
In Module 2, you will examine two groups of victims. The first group includes victims of interpersonal violence and their family members or significant others.
Victim Groups—Part I: Victims of Interpersonal Violence and Their Family Members/Significant Others
Sexual Assault
Domestic Violence
Stalking
Elder Abuse
Hate Crimes
Gender-Based School Violence
The second group includes indirect and/or vulnerable groups for victimization.
Victim Groups—Part II: Indirect and/or Vulnerable Groups for Victimization
Homicide Survivors
Financial Crimes
Terrorism
Mentally Ill
Underserved Populations
Vicarious Traumatization of Care Provider
Family members, significant others, and caregivers of victims and trauma survivors are often overlooked since they are not the direct victims of the violence. However, the victimization certainly impacts these individuals in many ways. This impact can interfere with the relationships between the victims and their family members and significant others. This can prevent these individuals from providing the support that the victims so desperately need to recover from the victimization and return to some sense of normalcy.
The discussion question for the module will focus on the concepts of forgiveness and revenge in the context of interpersonal victimization. What role does forgiveness play in the recovery process? Is it necessary to forgive the perpetrator in order to recover from an interpersonal victimization? There are no absolute answers to these questions.
For M2 Assignment 2, you will apply the knowledge you have about basic treatment planning to a case vignette involving a victim of interpersonal violence. In this treatment plan, you will be expected to focus upon:
The development of a therapeutic relationship with the client
The client's physical and emotional safety
The establishment or restoration of a normal routine for the client
Compare and contract empirical research findings for related to treatment for victims.
Vicarious Trauma and Compassion Fatigue
When you witness, in intimate detail, the violence another has endured, this can impact even the most seasoned professional. Vicarious trauma is also known as secondary trauma, secondary traumatic stress, or compassion fatigue. There is even an accompanying diagnosis—known as secondary traumatic stress disorder—that looks just like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) except it comes from secondary exposure instead of from direct experience.
The key point underlying vicarious trauma is that all clinicians who work with trauma victims will absorb the trauma cognitively, emotionally, and physiologically. The question is not only how and how much they will absorb but also what they do with the trauma. Two examples of positive ways a clinician may process the trauma are to utilize this traumatic experience to understand the perspective of the client or a clinician may discharge the trauma via exercise. Alternatively, an example of how vicarious trauma could negatively impact the clinician or therapeutic relationship is when a clinician acts out inappropriately caretaking or dismissing the client. Some clinicians will respond with PTSD-like symptoms. This may not occur for all cases or throughout their careers, but at one point, this usually will occur. One way of understanding this, from a constructivist or cognitive perspective, is to consider how in working with victims our basic schemas of the way the world works are called into question.
The following four major schemas are challenged:
Personal invulnerability.
The self is inherently positive and worthy.
The world is meaningful, orderly, and benign.
People are trustworthy.
Two common indicators of the impact of working with victims of trauma might be:
Increased use of dark humor or cynicism to cover the impact (For example, "Yeah, it's just a matter of time before she's back to the abuser for more.")
Increased fears or sense of vulnerability (For example, you become more vigilant about your children walking home late at night.)
The following indicate that you may not always connect back to a sense of vicarious trauma:
An increased need for dominance or desire to do something—even at the expense of taking over the client's decision-making power in the room.
A sense of victimization within a system—many people who work with victims experience the parallel process of feeling as if their employers are abusive and controlling. This is often a function of a projective process.
A sense of isolation—often from a feeling of uncertainty in talking about your experience with others who are not in the field. Others may, in fact, express reluctance to be too close to the details by saying things like, "How can you do that kind of work?" or "That must be so awful to hear about. I could never do that." You may sense individuals are sending you a clear message to let you know they are not the right people to whom you may vent your feelings or frustrations.
If you would like to expand your knowledge about vicarious trauma, there are several articles on the subject available in the University online library resources, including the following article:
Preventing Vicarious Traumatization of Mental Health Therapists: Identifying Protective Practices http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/docview/614507960
Natural Disasters
Victims of natural disasters are usually shaken by the randomness of the situation and the lack of power they have over it. You will notice that the interventions with these victims are very similar to the interventions with victims of any type of traumatic event, beginning with making sure the victim is safe.
Legal Rights for Crime VictimsIn Module 2, you will also focus on victims in the criminal justice system, studying the legal rights of crime victims and the victims' participation in criminal proceedings.
For many years, victims were relegated to the role of being witnesses in a trial, and their involvement in the procedures against their perpetrators were very limited, rendering them powerless and oftentimes adding more psychological damage to the original trauma.
Many states have amended their constitutions in recent years to protect a victim's rights.
Family and Interpersonal Victimization
Stalking
According to the National Center for Victims of Crime Stalking Resource, stalking is defined as "a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact, or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear."
According to the Stalking Resource Center's Stalking Fact Sheet (2012), Stalking Fact Sheet, 6.6 million people are stalked in one year in the United States. One in six women and one in nineteen men have experienced stalking victimization at some points during their lifetimes in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed. The majority of stalking victims are stalked by someone they know. Sixty-six percent of female victims and forty-one percent of male victims of stalking are stalked by current or former intimate partners. More than half of female victims and more than one-third of male victims of stalking indicated that they were stalked before the age of twenty-five.
https://www.justice.gov/ovw/stalking Click here to learn more about stalking
The Stalking Resource Center advises victims of stalking to document the incidents of stalking behavior as this record can be a great help in criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit.
References:
National Center on Elder Abuse. (n.d.). Frequently asked questions. Retrieved
from http://www.ncea.aoa.gov/faq/index.aspx
National Center on Elder Abuse. (n.d.). Statistics/data. Retrieved from http://
www.ncea.aoa.gov/Library/Data/index.aspx
Stalking Resource Center, National Center for Victims of Crime. (2012). Stalking
fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.victimsofcrime.org/docs/src/
stalking-fact-sheet_english.pdf?sfvrsn=4
Victim Groups
Veterans
You will read about PTSD in veterans in one of the assigned readings. Besides the physical and psychological trauma experienced by war veterans, there is insult added to injury when veterans are told their physical symptoms are in their heads.
An article published in The Boston Globe (2008, December 15) states:
For more than a decade, federal officials have denied that sick veterans of the Gulf War share a distinct illness. But a 452-page federal report by an independent committee of scientists and veterans, released last month by the Boston University School of Public Health, found that at least 174,000 veterans, or 1 in 4 people deployed by the US military to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, have Gulf War illness, manifesting in a range of symptoms, probably caused by pesticide exposure and an experimental drug that hundreds of thousands were ordered to take as a precaution against chemical attack.
To read the article on Gulf War illness, called "Years Later, Gulf Ills Linger," refer to the Webliography. Hopefully, the veterans will receive the help they need for their physical illnesses and also for the mental health conditions associated with not being believed for so long.
Mentally Ill
Teplin, McClelland, Abram, and Weiner (2005) conducted a major study of the victimization of adults with severe mental illness. The purpose of their research was to determine the prevalence and incidence rates of crime victimization among individuals with severe mental illness and to compare those rates to that of the general population. These researchers administered the National Crime Victimization Survey https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245#Questionnaires to a random sample of 936 severely mentally ill patients from sixteen treatment programs across the country.
The results of the survey included the following:
More than one-quarter of persons with SMI had been victims of a violent crime in the past year, a rate more than eleven times higher than the general population rates even after controlling for demographic differences between the two samples.
The annual incidence of violent crime in the SMI sample is more than four times higher than the general population rates.
Depending on the type of violent crime (rape/sexual assault, robbery, assault, and their subcategories), prevalence was six to twenty-three times greater among persons with SMI than among the general population.
It is clear that severely mentally ill individuals are a particularly vulnerable population significantly more at risk than the general population of being the victim of crime.
Reference:
Teplin, L. A., McClelland, G. M., Abram, K. M., & Weiner, D. A. (2005). Crime
victimization in adults with severe mental illness: Comparison with the
National Crime Victimization Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry,
62(8), 911–921.
Please view Stalking and Its Victims
Conclusion
The module would have widened your perspective on who the victims of crime are. Not only do the primary victims of crime suffer the physical, emotional, psychological, and financial consequences of their victimization, but their significant others and family members as well as helping professionals who provide them services are at risk of vicarious traumatization. We have explored these issues as well as many different victim categories and groups through the readings and assignments for this module.