Gendered Violence, Mental Health and Recovery in Everyday Lives ─ Beyond Trauma

Gendered Violence, Abuse and Mental Health in Everyday Lives: Beyond Trauma offers new insights into the social dimensions of emotional distress in abuse-related mental health problems, and explores the many interconnections between gendered violence, different forms of abuse and poor mental health. Looking at how individuals can overcome the impact of abuse over the course of their lives, Moulding maps a feminist-informed recovery-oriented approaches to therapy and prevention.

Drawing on sociological perspectives and a wide range of international research, as well as original qualitative data presented here for the first time, this book:

-Demonstrates how gender and other social power relations play out in the specific emotional dimensions of some of the mental health problems most strongly linked to abuse, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and eating disorders;

-Critiques the way that mainstream psychological theory and research pathologises the effects of abuse through various mental illness diagnoses, obscuring the nature of the individual emotional distress involved, its social context and relational nature;

-Outlines a feminist-informed, recovery-oriented approach that aims to reduce violence against women and children.

This innovative volume is an important contribution to the literature on the impact of violence and abuse on the lives and health of its survivors. It will be of interest to students and researchers from a range of disciplines and professions, including social work, gender studies, sociology, social policy, psychology, counselling, mental health, public health, medicine and nursing.

Nicole Moulding is Senior Lecturer at the University of South Australia, Australia. A qualified social worker, her teaching and research interests are in the areas of gender and mental health, gendered violence and abuse, and interpretive research methodologies.