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Gender-Sensitive and Culturally Responsive Services for Indian Immigrant Women Experiencing Domestic Violence: Centering Practitioners’ Perspectives in the United States
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Health care providers hold negative explicit and implicit biases against marginalized groups of people such as racial and ethnic minoritized populations. These biases permeate the health care system and affect patients via patient–clinician communication, clinical decision making, and institutionalized practices. Addressing bias remains a fundamental professional responsibility of those accountable for the health and wellness of our populations. Current interventions include instruction on the existence and harmful role of bias in perpetuating health disparities, as well as skills training for the management of bias. These interventions can raise awareness of provider bias and engage health care providers in establishing egalitarian goals for care delivery, but these changes are not sustained, and the interventions have not demonstrated change in behavior in the clinical or learning environment. Unfortunately, the efficacy of these interventions may be hampered by health care providers’ work and learning environments, which are rife with discriminatory practices that sustain the very biases US health care professions are seeking to diminish. We offer a conceptual model demonstrating that provider-level implicit bias interventions should be accompanied by interventions that systemically change structures inside and outside the health care system if the country is to succeed in influencing biases and reducing health inequities.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 43 is April 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Domestic violence is a pernicious social problem in the United States and a cause of national concern. The South Asian culture disempowers individuals experiencing domestic violence from recognizing and reporting victimization. Structural inequities may also discourage reporting victimization. These issues have led to inconsistent findings of domestic violence prevalence rates. Additionally, domestic violence studies with South Asians in the United States have predominantly focused on women, omitting men from this purview of research. The purpose of this study was to examine domestic violence victimization rates as well as their correlates among South Asian immigrant men and women. The sample for this cross-sectional study included 468 South Asians across the 50 U.S. states. Descriptive statistics were used to establish rates of domestic violence victimization. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to examine the correlates of domestic violence victimization. All of the sociodemographic information was added in step 1, and acculturation and gender-role attitudes were added as covariates in step 2.
The most prevalent type of domestic violence victimization was physical violence (48%), followed by emotional (38%), economic (35%), verbal (27%), immigration-related (26%), in-laws related (19%), and ultimately sexual abuse (11%). Prevalence rates were higher for women than for men in each type of violence. According to the logistic regression results, education, generational position, family type, and employment were significant correlates of domestic violence victimization. Prior to development of prevention programs by community agencies, it is essential to understand the nature and prevalence of domestic violence experiences among South Asians. The victimization of men in addition to women adds to the novelty of this research study and paves the way for practitioners and scholars to engage in conversations about providing both male and female victims of domestic violence with the needed resources and support. The article will discuss implications for research, practice, and policy.
Objectives:
African American women are disproportionately impacted by intimate partner violence (IPV)-related homicide. They reflect the second highest prevalence rates and experience the highest rates of murder resulting from IPV victimization. Although most survivors note that they have experienced rejection and anticipatory stigma as barriers to their help seeking, African American women additionally experience racism and racial discrimination as obstacles that may further preclude their help seeking. This systematic review highlights African American women's experiences of rejection from providers and the effects that it may have upon their ability to secure urgent aid.
Method:
A dearth of literature examines the subtle ways that African American women survivors experience rejection resulting from the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender oppression. Fundamental to developing more culturally salient interventions is more fully understanding their help-seeking experiences. A systematic review was conducted to provide a critical examination of the literature to understand the intersections of IPV and help-seeking behavior among African American women. A total of 85 empirical studies were identified and 21 were included in the systematic review. The review illuminates both the formal and semiformal help-seeking pathways.
Results:
We recommend integrating anti-Blackness racist praxis, incorporating African American women's ways of knowing and centralizing their needs in an effort to improve the health and well-being of this population.
Conclusions:
Eliminating barriers to more immediately accessing the domestic violence service provision system is key to enhance social work practice, policy, and research with African American female survivors of IPV.
Stay home, save lives" has been shown to reduce the impacts of COVID-19; however, it is crucial to recognize that efforts not to stress healthcare systems may have unintended social consequences for domestic violence. This commentary addresses domestic violence as an important social and public health implication of COVID-19. As a pandemic with a high contagion level, necessary social distancing measures have been put in place across the world to slow transmission and protect medical services. We first present literature that shows that among the effects of social distancing are social and functional isolation and economic stress, which are known to increase domestic violence. We then present preliminary observations from a content analysis conducted on over 300 news articles from the first six weeks of COVID-19 "lockdown" in the United States: articles predict an increase in domestic violence, report an increase in domestic violence, and inform victims on how to access services. Assessing the intersection of the early news media messaging on the effect of COVID-19 on DV and the literature on social isolation and crisis situations, we conclude the commentary with implications for current policy related to (1) increased media attention, (2) increased attention in healthcare systems, (3) promoting social and economic security, and (4) long-term efforts to fund prevention and response, as well as research implications to consider. The research is presented as ongoing, but the policy and procedure recommendations are presented with urgency.
This systematic review is the first published attempt to synthesize literature pertaining to intimate partner violence (IPV) interventions impacting South Asian women in the United States. Applying the conceptual framework of intersectionality, the goals of this review are to (1) understand current trends, intervention modalities, and areas of focus within IPV interventions targeting South Asian communities in the United States and (2) to identify gaps in the address of IPV among these communities. Using the Cochrane Handbook and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we searched 35 databases and identified 12 research studies. Our study included a collective sample of 318 South Asian IPV survivors and 25 organizations. Findings underscore that there are minimal IPV interventions available to South Asian women living in the United States. Most interventions have not been systematically evaluated, making their efficacy questionable. Those that reported outcome evaluation, namely recurrence of IPV, demonstrated limited efficacy. IPV research on South Asian women often dismisses financial concerns in light of cultural dimensions impacting IPV. Given that financial dependence is a major driver of violence against South Asian women, scholars must question the efficacy of available interventions that cannot foster the social and economic security of IPV survivors. Without sufficient attention to the intersecting social, cultural, and economic challenges that South Asian women face in abusive relationships, the efficacy of IPV interventions will remain limited.
Integrating gender in all aspects of health services is important and mental health is no exception. Despite several recommendations regarding the need for gender-sensitive mental health services, the actual availability of these is not clear, both in high and low-income countries. We sought to understand what aspects of gender-sensitive mental health care were considered a priority by global experts in women’s mental health and how satisfied they were with the current availability of these services in their own place of work. A survey with 43 items under 7 domains of gender-sensitive mental health care for women was sent to 150 experts in women’s mental health across the world, of whom 73 responded. Rating on each item was from 0 to 5. While majority of the experts rated most of the items as being very important (median score of 4 and above), some areas that were considered most important included training of mental health professionals in gender sensitivity, having private spaces for examination, using a life course approach to service planning and delivery, and assisting women who find it difficult to navigate the system and mother-baby units. However, satisfaction rates with available services were quite low overall and much lower among experts in low-income countries compared with those from high-income countries. Even in high-income countries, only 6 of the top 20 items were scored as satisfactory by at least 50% of experts. This expert survey method to arrive at consensus on top priorities for improving delivery of gender-sensitive mental health care indicates that at least 72% of the items provided in the survey were considered extremely important. Poor satisfaction of experts in both high- and low-income countries with availability of gender-sensitive services indicates the need for local and global strategic action and multilevel stakeholder engagement.
Objectives: Limited research exists on multilevel influences of intimate partner violence (IPV) among immigrant groups in the United States, particularly South Asians. Using a socioecological framework, this study examined risk and protective factors of IPV among a diverse group of South Asian immigrant survivors of IPV and identified their perceived need for services. Method: Sixteen South Asian immigrant survivors were recruited from New York; Maryland; Virginia; and Washington, DC, using a snowball sampling method. Participants were 1st-generation and 2nd-generation immigrants born in India (n = 4), Bangladesh (n = 4), Pakistan (n = 5), the United States (n = 2), and Sri Lanka (n = 1). Data were collected using in-depth interviews (n = 16) and a focus group (n = 1). A thematic analysis procedure was used to analyze the data and to identify themes across different ecological levels. Results: IPV was related to factors at multiple levels, such as cultural normalization of abuse, gender role expectations, need to protect family honor, arranged marriage system, abusive partner characteristics, and women’s fear of losing children and being on own. Protective factors included supportive family and friends, religion, safety strategies, education, and empowerment. Women highlighted the need for community education and empowerment efforts and culturally responsive services for addressing IPV in South Asian communities. Conclusions: South Asian survivors of IPV have experienced, and some continue to experience, abuse due to factors operating at multiple levels of the ecological framework. Consideration of culturally specific risk and protective factors for IPV at multiple contexts in women’s lives could inform culturally responsive IPV prevention and intervention strategies for South Asian communities in the United States.
Based on life history narratives of 57 women in India and interviews with 21 practitioners, we document the neglect, abuse, and instrumental deprivation of women’s rights through the process of transnational abandonment. While gendered local sociocultural milieus and economic norms contribute to these harms, they are crucially enabled and sustained by transnational formal-legal frameworks. Widening the explanatory lens for understanding domestic violence beyond the family and community, we argue that in a globalized world, (inter)state policies serve to construct these women as a subordinate category of citizens—“disposable women”—who can be abused and abandoned with impunity.
This article describes the lived experiences of domestic violence among a convenience sample of 20 South Asian women. The experiences of abuse are drawn from in-depth telephonic interviews conducted all across the United States. The analysis describes four major categories of abuse: (a) types of abuse; (b) abuse involving children; (c) family involvement in abuse; and (d) formal and informal support. Implications for social workers working with South Asian women are shared.
The issue of domestic violence among South Asian immigrant population in the United States is examined in the light of the Violence Against Women Act. The paper gives a background to the issue of domestic violence in the South Asian community and examines the Violence Against Women Acts of 1994, 2000 and 2005 with regard to issues affecting South Asian women. It addresses issues around marriage and has emphasized the difficulties of women with dependent immigration status. Policy alternatives are examined and discussed with regard to efficacy and efficiency of the policy.
The aim of this article is to explore some of the ways in which British South Asian women survivors of sexual violence (in particular, those who are either British born or have lived in the UK for most of their lives and are fluent English speakers) construct the effects of `culture' within their accounts of sexually violent experiences. We present a discursive analysis based on semi-structured interviews with eight English-speaking women of South Asian origin living in the UK, who had either escaped from or were currently seeking help for sexual violence. Our analysis discusses how a discourse of `culture as problematic and unchangeable' is both accepted and challenged simultaneously. Culture is presented as the reason why family and community members hold problematic views about sexually violent experiences. However, these women simultaneously resist this discourse through demonstrating their disappointment and ambivalence with their family and community-held views. Furthermore, we discuss how such constructions intersect (or not) with service provider constructions as reported in previous research. We also discuss the implications that our analysis may have for service provision and propose a set of theories and models that might inform them. This study forms part of a larger project on South Asian women's experiences of sexual violence.
This special section of Transcultural Psychiatry explores the local-global spaces of engagement being opened up by the Movement for Global Mental Health, with particular emphasis on the need for expanded engagement with local communities. Currently the Movement places its main emphasis on scaling up mental health services and advocating for the rights of the mentally ill, framed within universalised western understandings of health, healing and personhood. The papers in this section emphasise the need for greater attention to the impacts of context, culture and local survival strategies on peoples' responses to adversity and illness, greater acknowledgement of the agency and resilience of vulnerable communities and increased attention to the way in which power inequalities and social injustices frame peoples' opportunities for mental health. In this Introduction, we highlight ways in which greater community involvement opens up possibilities for tackling each of these challenges. Drawing on community health psychology, we outline our conceptualisation of "community mental health competence" defined as the ability of community members to work collectively to facilitate more effective prevention, care, treatment and advocacy. We highlight the roles of multi-level dialogue, critical thinking and partnerships in facilitating both the "voice" of vulnerable communities as well as "receptive social environments" where powerful groups are willing to recognise communities' needs and assist them in working for improved well-being. Respectful local-global alliances have a key role to play in this process. The integration of local community struggles for mental health into an energetic global activist Movement opens up exciting possibilities for translating the Movement's calls for improved global mental health from rhetoric to reality.
This article provides a comprehensive review of the emerging domestic violence literature using a race, class, gender, sexual orientation intersectional analysis and structural framework fostered by women of color and their allies to understand the experiences and contexts of domestic violence for marginalized women in U.S. society. The first half of the article lays out a series of challenges that an intersectional analysis grounded in a structural framework provides for understanding the role of culture in domestic violence. The second half of the article points to major contributions of such an approach to feminist methods and practices in working with battered women on the margins of society.
Until recently, research studies have implied that domestic violence does not affect Asian American and immigrant communities, or even Asians abroad, because ethnicity or culture has not been addressed. In this content analysis, the authors examined trends in publications in leading scholarly journals on violence relating to Asian women and domestic violence. A coding schema was developed, with two raters coding the data with high interrater reliability. Sixty articles were published over the 16 years studied, most atheoretical and focusing on individual levels of analysis. The terms used in discussing domestic violence reflected a feminist perspective. Three quarters of the studies were empirical, with most guided by logical positivism using quantitative designs. Most targeted specific Asian subgroups (almost a third focused on Asian Indians) rather than categorizing Asians as a general ethnic category. The concept of “Asian culture” was most often assessed by discussing Asian family structure. Future research is discussed in light of the findings.
In India, there is limited research on the nature of familial relationships and domestic violence that women living with serious mental illness (SMI) experience. Using the self-in-relation theory and through 34 in-depth interviews, I explored narratives related to family, marriage, and violence in familial relationships among women living with SMI at a psychiatric institution in an urban city in India. These narratives are critical because they highlight how the presence of mental illness exacerbates the violence women experience. Informed by participants’ narratives, I offer specific recommendations on creating gender-sensitive mental health care that is mindful of women’s social realities.
COVID‐19 (the new strain of coronavirus) has been declared a global pandemic. Measures announced over recent weeks to tackle it have seen people’s day‐to‐day life drastically altered. These changes are essential to beat coronavirus and protect health systems (UK Home Office 2020). However, there are unintended, negative consequences. As the virus continues to spread across the world, it brings with it multiple new stresses, including physical and psychological health risks, isolation and loneliness, the closure of many schools and businesses, economic vulnerability and job losses. Through all of that, children (and their mothers) are particularly vulnerable (End Violence against Children, 2020) to the risk of domestic violence. Domestic violence refers to a range of violations that happen within a domestic space. It is a broad term that encompasses intimate partner violence (IPV), a form of abuse that is perpetrated by a current or ex‐partner.
It takes an inordinate amount of resiliency for South Asian (SA) immigrant women survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV)/domestic violence (DV) to seek outside help. The purpose of authors of this study is to understand the process/pathways used by abused SA women to seek formal sources of help. A convenience sample of adult SA women (N = 9), who were survivors of IPV was recruited from a SA women's organization located in a large Southwestern metropolitan area in the United States. In-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed resulting in five themes. Despite seeking help, participants experienced barriers in accessing formal help and leaving an abusive relationship.
This qualitative study was conducted with a convenience sample of 20 South Asian women experiencing domestic violence in the United States. The results explore the patterns of abuse as well as the factors and circumstances (i.e. turning points) that motivated South Asian women to change in the context of the stage that they were in as per the Landenburger model (binding, enduring, disengaging, and recovery). The four themes that emerged from the interviews and analysis are (1) ‘Timing and Frequency of abuse’, (2) ‘Methods of control – financial, isolation and suspicion’, (3) ‘Cycle of Abuse’, and (4)’ Turning Points – motivation to change’. Implications for practice and policy-level changes for abused South Asian women in the United States are discussed.
South Asians are one of the fastest growing immigrant communities in North America. Domestic violence (DV) in the South Asian community is at least as prevalent as it is in the general population, yet is massively underreported. Several reasons have been cited for the silence of South Asian immigrant women about DV. While some of these are financial, social and structural, there are others that arise from discourses specific to South Asian communities. The aim of this study was to examine the origins of these discourses using the framework of historicalcritical discourse analysis. This paper presents the results of this analysis and provides evidence that challenges the dominant discourses and beliefs that are commonly used by South Asian immigrant families to silence women. The findings have implications for health and wellbeingof South Asian women experiencing abuse and violence.
The present study used hypothetical vignettes and surveys to investigate the recognition of IPV and attitudes toward seeking help from informal sources (family and friends) and formal sources (counseling services, domestic violence services, and criminal justice services) among 152 Asian-Indian women in the U.S. In addition, the study examined the effects of acculturation, enculturation, and social/public stigma on willingness to seek counseling services. Results showed that the participants were more likely to perceive physical and sexual violence as abuse than emotional and verbal violence. In addition, the participants indicated that they would be more likely to seek help from informal helpers than formal sources, regardless of the type of IPV. Greater acculturation, less enculturation, and social/public stigma emerged as significant predictors of willingness to seek counseling in response to the hypothetical examples of IPV.
This study examines South Asian women's experience of domestic violence in Hong Kong. Despite the proliferation of literature on domestic violence, this issue remain unexplored in the discourse of domestic violence in Hong Kong. A qualitative research approach through face to face interview with 14 women was employed. Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Findings from this study highlight the importance of considering the social and cultural influence on how women perceived and construct their experiences of abuse.Implications for practice and policies are highlighted.
At the best of times, immigrants are viewed with suspicion by host societies. In recent years, however, public discourse on immigration has acquired particularly negative undertones, with surveillance as the central narrative. Leaning heavily on identification and deportation of undocumented immigrants, U.S. policy has held a significant anti-immigrant bias over the last decade. In the midst of this divisive rhetoric, it is easy to lose track of the strengths of immigration and its contribution to nation building. Migrants, by definition, move "to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve prospects for themselves or their family" (International Organization for Migration 2011a). The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that there were 214 million international migrants worldwide in 2011, up from an estimated 150 million in 2001 (International Organization for Migration n.d.). Although there are numerous reasons for these heightened levels of human migration, a major one is globalization and the resulting incentives and ease of mobility of labor from lower-to higher-wage countries. This article presents an analysis of South Asian immigration as it impacts women. Comprised of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, South Asia encom-passes a diverse landscape of language, religion, race, and a multitude of other identity lines. Despite these differences, social and cultural similarities bring the people of this region together as a unified whole and allow U.S. public policy to treat this region as a bloc. Yet, men and women experience immigration in very different ways. Women face unique challenges that are often exacerbated by unintended consequences of immigra-tion policies and practices. Activist organizations like Manavi have grown to address these imbalances, and landmark legislation like the United States' Violence Against Women Act have helped restore some rights to women immigrants. What is critically needed, however, is a reframing of the conversation. Women need to be viewed as primary immigrants in the same way as men, not as dependents or derivatives of men.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
In this article, we explore intimate partner violence (IPV) from an intersectional, feminist perspective. We describe how an updated feminist view guides us to a perspective on IPV that is more strongly grounded in an antioppressive, nonviolent, socially just feminist stance than a second-wave gender-essential feminist stance that suggests that patriarchy is the cause of IPV. At the time we began to work together it seemed that a researcher had to be identified as a "family violence" researcher or a "feminist" researcher of violence against women, and that it wasn't possible to be a feminist researcher who looked beyond patriarchy as the cause of IPV. We advocate critically thinking about essentialist practices in clinical work so that we can maintain an antioppressive, socially just, nonviolent approach to working with clients who experience IPV.
This study examined the extent of domestic violence and sociocultural factors (isolation, social support, acculturation, and patriarchy) associated with domestic violence among a community sample of 215 women of South Asian origin in the U.S. The sample is the largest to date in a study of domestic violence among South Asian women. Both paper and Web surveys were used. Of the sample, 38 % experienced some form of abuse in the past year. Isolation from spouse/partner and perceived social support predicted abuse. This information is vital in developing effective and culturally appropriate intervention methods for South Asian women victims of domestic violence.
The terms wife abuse and battered woman were coined in the 1970s. Although such naming is meaningful, these social constructions are restrictive so that only a narrow range of behaviors and people fit these labels. With the help of interviews with Hindu Asian Indian immigrants, this article highlights the importance of including the experiences of diverse groups of women in any analysis of domestic violence. Thirty people, 5 abused Asian Indian women who had sought help from support groups, 11 members of South Asian support groups, and 14 married, nonabused women living in a city on the east coast of the United States were interviewed for this study. The study challenges the popular perception of abused women, specifically South Asian battered women, as passive victims.
Intimate partner violence against immigrant women is at epidemic proportions, but research has only recently begun to address the concern. A review of the legal, medical, and social science research literature reveals little data, but that which exist demonstrate that immigrant women's cultures, contexts, and legal status (a) increase vulnerability for abuse, (b) are used by batterers to control and abuse immigrant women, and (c) create barriers to women seeking and receiving help. Data also reveal that immigrant culture and context offer resiliency factors through which programs and policy can be used to better serve these populations.
The Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Stigmatization Model identifies how three stigma components hinder IPV help-seeking behaviors: cultural stigma, stigma internalization, and anticipated stigma. Cultural stigma highlights societal beliefs that de-legitimize people experiencing abuse. Stigma internalization involves the extent to which people come to believe that the negative stereotypes about those who experience IPV may be true of themselves. Anticipated stigma emphasizes concern about what will happen once others know about the partner abuse (e.g., rejection). We provide an integrative literature review that supports the IPV stigmatization model and its role in reducing help-seeking behaviors.
In the South Asian community in the United States, domestic violence is a prevalent problem of significant magnitude. Although the community stridently denies the existence of this horror, women have been systematically organizing antiviolence-against-women work for the last 15 years. At this time, it is a vibrant movement struggling with several complex issues that are perhaps less common in the dominant white community. As in the lives of immigrant women of color, much of the intricacies of domestic violence in the South Asian context emerge from the intersections of race, class, and residency status problems. Consequently, a slew of personal, institutional, and cultural barriers commingle to form roadblocks for battered South Asian women, who attempt to escape family violence. As the needs of battered South Asian first and second generation women enlarge and become more perceptible, the community-based organizations have to ready themselves for more complicated activities in the future.
Research on domestic violence documents the particular vulnerability of immigrant women due to reasons including social isolation, language barriers, lack of awareness about services, and racism on the part of services. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with insecure immigration status residing in Yorkshire and Northwest England, this article explores how inequalities created by culture, gender, class, and race intersect with state immigration and welfare policies in the United Kingdom, thereby exacerbating structures of patriarchy within minority communities. It is within these contexts that South Asian women with insecure immigration status experience intensified forms and specific patterns of abuse.
Objective:
The aim of this paper is to examine aspects of mental health and mental health care through a gender lens.
Conclusion:
Gender differences have an impact on mental health and the experience and course of women's mental illness. Comprehensive gender-sensitive mental health care requires the planning, delivery, monitoring and quality improvement initiatives of mental health care to be informed by a knowledge and understanding of gender differences in women and men and their inter-relationship with respect to childhood and adult life experiences (e.g. violence and abuse); day-to-day social, cultural, and family realities; expression and experience of mental ill health and treatment needs and responses.
The strengths perspective in social work practice continues to develop conceptually. The strengths-based approach to case management with people with severe mental illness is well established. More recently, there have been developments in strengths-based practice with other client groups and the emergence of strengths orientations in work with communities. To augment these developments, converging lines of thinking, research, and practice in areas such as developmental resilience, healing and wellness, and constructionist narrative and story have provided interesting supports and challenges to the strengths perspective. This article reviews some current thinking and research about using a strengths orientation and assesses conceptual endorsements and criticisms of the strengths perspective.
In the United Kingdom (UK), concern about inequalities in health and health care has led to interest in gender sensitivity in health policy and practice.
To develop an understanding of possibilities for gender sensitive care through exploring the concepts of gender and gender sensitivity and through reviewing relevant knowledge about gender and health.
The dimensions of the concept of gender and theories explaining gender relations are explored through a review of key social science texts. A discussion of gender sensitivity draws on Bowden's analysis of gender sensitive ethics. A literature review of evidence about gender and health identifies relevant knowledge for gender sensitive care.
Seven features of the concept of gender are identified. Gender sensitivity involves an understanding of the socio-political context of experience and relationships. The social context also affects health. Differences in male and female mortality and morbidity rates are likely to be related to differences in economic resources, differences in men and women's position in public and private worlds, to power in social relations and to sexuality and body image. Possibilities for gender sensitive care may be supported through feminist approaches and through a postmodernist understanding of the manner in which discourses shape our understanding of gender and gender relations. Valuing care is a feature of gender sensitivity.
Gender sensitive care involves recognizing the significance of research related to social influences on health and understanding nursing in its socio-political context, and care in the context of gender relations. Experiential learning can synthesize learning across varied learning modes, bridging learning through experience and formal analysis. Exploring concepts, evidence about gender and health and personal experience will all be important in the development of gender sensitive care.
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