Giving A Voice To Women’s Mental Health

No Shame To Talk About Mental Illness

A 2019 report by researchers from the University of Birmingham (the first UK cohort study looking at the associations between domestic abuse and mental illness) reported a “strong association” between exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) and the incidence of mental health challenges or full-blown mental illness raging from Depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to extremely severe ones like schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder.

According to the academic journal called “The Conversation”, domestic violence affects women’s mental health in more ways than we can imagine at first thought.

Domestic abuse is when a partner seeks to gain psychological and emotional control of the woman by demeaning her, controlling her actions, being physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, verbally and or sexually abusive and intimidating her.

Some ways the victim may adapt to cope (whether she remains in the relationship or flees) can also increase the risk of experiencing a range of mental health conditions.

Do not be deceived by the abuser’s ‘fake’ remorse and apology each time they abuse you or have one of those outbursts you are thinking you
cause after all. The cycle of outburst, abuse, fear, fake remorse and lovemaking, only increase the woman’s anxiety and net nervousness, with repercussions on her children.

That, in a nutshell, was how I ended up with a PTSD diagnosis in 2014. I endured six years in an abusive, toxic and traumatic marriage where I even picked up a knife to kill myself while 5 months pregnant, coming in from an abusive and traumatic childhood and just being sick and tired of being sick and tired. I didn’t want to remain in my country.

I couldn’t take them with me, having barely any resources. Am I the only woman who has such a story and had to flee her marriage and country, leaving her own children behind?

Well, that’s how bad my mental health got affected and how I got to Europe and fought to get a grip of myself and survive until I could come back home to my country and sons in 2015.

How am I doing now, you may wonder? Well, in part 2 of my story, I will bring you up on that. In the meantime, please note your mental health is much more at stake when you are toxic relationship or marriage than when you are not.

We have for long ignored talking about mental health, and women, in particular, suffer tremendously. We have been so accustomed to faking it and trying to tow some conventional lines so we can be validated and given a “tiny seat” at some patriarchal table; we just bear it all until we crash and are institutionalized, rejected or give up completely.

I refused to be such a statistic and now unreservedly use my story to raise awareness of mental health and sensitise the relationship between IPV or GBV and mental illness.