Thursday, September 15, 2011
National Dating Abuse Helpline » 43% of College Women Experience Violence and Abusive Dating Behaviors
Love is respect: Love is Not Abuse, a program of our founding sponsor Liz Claiborne, has revealed the findings of their recent study of dating abuse among college students. The results? Dating violence and abuse among college students is more prevalent on college campuses than previously believed.
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8 comments:
Although these statistics are depressing, the amount of help and opportunities this website provides hope for the future. Although it is not that shocking that so many women have suffered from some sort of abusive relationship, I am incredibly surprised of how many abusive relationships occur in college. It is also very encouraging to know that so much information is being provided to help the victims but also information for the loved ones of the victims who would want to help but who do not know how.
I was not so much surprised by the percentage of women who have experienced abusive relationships (I have seen this figure before) than I was by the high percentages of college students who didn’t know how to get help for a friend (58%) or themselves (38%) if they were a victim of dating abuse. It is hard to say whether this is the fault of the campus, of the individuals. Either colleges are not doing a good enough job of disseminating information on relationship abuse, or the students are blowing off the information as something that they will never need to use, until they do. I think that this study would be much more conclusive and helpful if it included a larger number of students. 508 students is not a particularly high number of people to draw conclusive information from.
I'm glad that there is an organization like this to help not only women but men too who are in abusive relationships. These statistics are just so heart breaking I had no idea that there were this many abusive relationships in college and I realized as I was reading the article that I don't know what I would do if my friend was in an abusive relationship. Now I know where I can go to, to get help. This website looks really helpful and I hope it does help women and men in abusive relationships find some help and peace.
We're very lucky that we go to a university that makes sure that there are good resources for girls that feel they are in abusive situations. I think that a lot of girls don't realize that they are in an abusive relationship until they feel it is too late to deal with it. It is really upsetting that so many people feel that they don't know how to help a friend who is in an abusive relationship. I hope that students at CMU know how to deal with situations like these, since there are so many sexual abuse counselors around campus.
I'm grateful for the supplied resources of this article and am glad to see that this school works very hard to provide help however I can't help but be curious about these statistics. I'm surprised how many woman contributed to the poll considering the personal nature of this topic. Many woman are not willing to admit that they are in abusive relationships. Contrastingly, some woman may admit to it, but really are not sure of the nature. Although I want to believe that this number is accurate, I can't help but think that this number is actually lower than reality. I can see women reporting that they were once in an abusive relationship but not that they are currently in one.
I'm surprised by the statistics, but maybe that's because of the specific CMU college experience. I know friends at looser and more southern schools who are currently involved in an abusive relationship. But these are girls who even in high school tended to end up in various forms of abusive relationships. Maybe our college stats are so high because we aren't fixing the problems beginning in high school. I would have no idea how to help my friends in these situations, especially in college where you don't really have many people looking out for you.
I'm surprised by the statistics, but maybe that's because of the specific CMU college experience. I know friends at looser and more southern schools who are currently involved in an abusive relationship. But these are girls who even in high school tended to end up in various forms of abusive relationships. Maybe our college stats are so high because we aren't fixing the problems beginning in high school. I would have no idea how to help my friends in these situations, especially in college where you don't really have many people looking out for you.
This is interesting... Hannah touches on a good point that most people (men and women alike) will put themselves in abusive relationships over and over throughout their lives without ever really finding a solution. It's a rather depressing psychological phenomena. The idea that these people could be helped is optimistic and nice to hear, but I find it rather questionable in terms of effectiveness. The first step to recovering from a situation like this is to admit that there is a problem, which is something that most abuse victims simply can't wrap their heads around. Rather than saying it is unacceptable for them to be treated in such a way, they blame themselves for the "punishment." What it comes down to is that it takes a very specific type of person to allow an abusive relationship to continue, these people are more susceptible to what is called learned helplessness than others. Because they have been conditioned to feel that they do not have control over the situation and that the are at fault, they continue to take the abuse time and time again. This is all information I got in my personality development class this summer. As a matter of fact, my professor had worked at a battered women's shelter for a time, during which more than 75% of women would go through the shelter and right back to their boyfriends/husbands. The other 25% would often go and get a new boyfriend who was just as bad. The focus really needs to be reconditioning the victims so that these scenarios don't arise anymore. I'm not trying to say that the victims are to blame by any means, but more disturbing than the mentality of the abuser is that of the abused. That is the person who truly needs psychiatric evaluation in order to develop a stronger sense of control and therefore improve their position.
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