Trauma is an emotion that cannot be defined. No matter how many definitions that exist for trauma, every human will experience trauma their own way. In terms of health, trauma has not been properly researched enough to help people recover from it in a personal way. It is usually all treated within the same category and sometimes it’s even treated as if it’s not necessarily a health condition. In terms of trauma from domestic violence against women, treatment and resources are scarce and often very expensive, especially for most of the women who have experienced this in my country of Ethiopia.
Domestic violence in Ethiopia is an epidemic. As many as 6 out of 10, or 60% of Ethiopian women in relationships have been beaten or sexually assaulted by their husbands or partners (Tsehai 2008). This epidemic is aided with the fact that it’s culturally unacceptable for women to speak out against their husband or partner, so on top of the physical trauma, they also face psychological trauma that can lead to even more problems on top of the mistreatment they are already facing. Domestic violence is also ruled as “the husband’s choice” and is socially acceptable in Ethiopia. This view is morally invalid, and discussions need to occur to erase this stigma from Ethiopian families. There are very few places to turn to for help, as I searched for health centers that have counselors or therapists, and it did not show anything besides health centers that focus on birth or emergency problems.
Many physicians focus on the wrong things while examining a person who may have faced domestic violence. They might find digging answers out of patients uncomfortable. In a situation where getting protection against their assailant can cause serious problems, in cultural terms, reframing trauma as a medical issue can be very tricky. Creating a dialogue, giving these women a comfortable space to speak, and providing the right steps to heal can help reframe trauma as a health issue that women are silently facing in Ethiopia.
Creating a dialogue can help reframe trauma as a health issue in Ethiopia. Creating a dialogue can include political leaders around the world speaking up about this epidemic. This will help many people focus on what is actually wrong and can help everyone see that this can create deeper issues than physical damages. It would be hard to create marches since it is culturally unacceptable to speak out against their partners.
Giving women a comfortable space to speak about their trauma could reframe biomedicine as a system. Biomedicine is based on biological and chemical knowledge, rather than knowledge on psychological and social systems. The use of therapists and counseling is an important part of healing in the basis of trauma and domestic violence, although as I mentioned, trauma impacts each person differently.
Reframing trauma and violence against women as health issues would challenge our beliefs about biomedicine by helping a group of people instead of just one person. One benefit to biomedicine is that it focuses on individual treatments, rather than population treatment (Portney 2003). Mental health is one of the few health problems that call for being treated patient by patient, instead of treating everyone equally.
It would also create more research in my chosen country of Ethiopia about mental health issues and how domestic violence impacts women besides physically. A benefit of the biomedical system is that it is backed up with tons of research and highly efficient professionals. In my chosen country of Ethiopia, there is not much knowledge about mental health, especially mental health of women involved in post-traumatic events. If trauma was globally known as a health issue, it could create more opportunities such as jobs, to give people more possibilities and it could even help some people escape the trauma and do better in their lives.
Integrational trauma is trauma that is passed down from generation to generation and is typically never solved. Many people believe that the trauma is passed down in DNA, and that is true (Davis 2016).This concept challenges biomedicine because biomedicine points out that health problems are individual and can ignore the social factors that cause illness, which in this case is not properly releasing trauma that a person has gone through.
- https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/comorbidity-psychiatry/intergenerational-transmission-trauma-introduction-clinician
- http://tsehainy.com/281
- https://upliftconnect.com/intergenerational-trauma/