Reframing violence against women as a health issue challagnes our understanding of health, illness and medicine only if we view health in a biomedical proseptive. By making gender based violence and trauma a health issue it allows violence against women to become a population / societial problem rather that isolated individuals ones. In the American health system, health is viewed biomedically. Biomedicine is a mode of medicine which uses science such as biology or biochemistry to explain a medical problem (Lecture 7).   While this approach is useful in many situations, it is not the approach to take when looking at violence against women. The biomedical approach works best when there is a single cause for the disorder not multiple factors. For this reason the framing violence as a health issue in this context is a problem because it does not fully explain/ look at how violence and trauma affects a women’s life environmental, social and mentally . For example, treating trauma biomedically, a doctor might prescribe drugs to treat trauma related disorders like PTSD. These drugs are typically SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors which increases the level of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a chemical neurotransmitter which promotes feelings of well – being. This type of treatment might make the patient think they feel better but is not actually treating the real cause of her trauma. The treatment is just treating her biochemically but not stopping the actually problem from taking place. Additionally as  Dr. Gabriel mentioned in her lecture, “ trauma is really a culturally determined thing… what is traumatic to you is not necessarily traumatic to me”. It depends on many factors like the circumstances of someone’s life or other types of stressors. By not to look at the environmental and social aspects of the patient’s life, this medical system fails to get the complete story of the women’s problem. Therefore framing violence as a health issue in a biomedical context is a problem.

Reframing violence against women as a health issue ,according to WHO definition, will reinforce our understanding of health. The World Health Organization defines health as “ a state of complete physical, mental and social well- being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”  ( WHO ). By viewing health in this context, violence against women can be looked at from all aspects of her life.This is important because violence against women is a detrimental health challenge that can affect all aspects of her health, physically, mentally and socially.  

In Afghanistan, violence against women is a significant threat. Nearly 87% of women faced domestic violence and 80% of all suicides in Afghanistan are committed by women (Times). Even though,  a law which eliminated violence against women was signed in 2009, violence against women still remained high. According to the United Nations report, violence against women is mostly ignored by the criminal justice sytsem in Afghanistan. Women are abused by their husbands or their father- in – laws. Even more surprising women also inflict abuse on other women. For example, mother and sister-in-laws will inflict abuse on women as well. This type of abuse is both mental and physically. Viewing violence as a health issue in the context of health as defined by WHO would take into account the environment of the women and the social factor which caused her problem. The problem might be solved by trying to improve the women’s home life and relationship with her relatives. If the biomedical model was used , as mentioned before, antidepressants might be prescribed to increase “ feeling of well – being” but not actually solve the problem. In this type of society, women don’t have access to even basic healthcare. They often can’t go to the hospital for even the most deadly disorders. Therefore women in this society are not going to go to the doctor for abuse. Unfortunately, the lack of help means that many women commit suicide. Under the WHO’s definition of health, environmental and social factors will be considered to offer a real solution to the problem.

Intergenerational trauma does reinforce yet also challenges the biochemical and medical models of health. Intergenerational trauma is an idea that trauma can be transferred from one generation of trauma to the next through post traumatic stress mechanism ( wiki ).  The transmission of this trauma could be due epigenetic transmission. This means that the environment and external factors can change ones cellular activity. So this might mean that a specific gene could be mutated or signaling pathway is altered. This change is then passed onto the offspring. For example, stress leds to the activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. High levels of stress will cause an increase in cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol than activates the HPA axis and this continues through a positive feedback loop .  Excess amount of cortisol has epigenetic changes to the body. These changes affect not only how they handle post traumatic stress, depression and other disorder but these changes can also be passed on to their children. While this process is highly biochemical, environmental and societal factors are just as or even more important because they are what start this whole process.