Efficacy of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Battered Women

Description

Page: 1677-1679

Adyasha Mahanti and Sayantani Behura (Department of Gender Studies, Rama Devi Women’s University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha)

Battered Women Syndrome (BWS) refers to the behavioural condition that develops due to prolonged maltreatment by an intimate, overpowering male partner over an extended period of time. The paper focuses on empowering battered women’s strengths and choices by providing CBT. Through Cognitive restructuring and Mindfulness practice, battered women have shown the power to identify the maladaptive belief systems and possess more coherent, practical ways of understanding challenging situations, leading to improved concentration, better pain management, and emotion regulation. The current research work presents a qualitative study of battered women, which examined their lived experiences. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were taken from 20 battered women focusing on the results of what happens when you are confined to torture associated with trauma. The main aim of this research was to identify battered women using the Women’s Abuse Screening Tool (WAST). Those who scored higher on WAST were administered Beck’s Depression Inventory to assess the level of depression. The battered women were selected and interviewed using a purposive snowball sampling technique from Basundhara, Cuttack. The in-depth interviews conducted on the participants elicited five main central themes such as Repetition of Physical Exploitation, Emotional and Psychological Anguish, Learned Helplessness, Victimization of Women and Tolerance to Pain. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for therapy by administering every participant with severe depression, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.