Gender-Based Violence & Mental Health (Here's My Story)

(TW: sexual assault, DV, mental illness)

I don’t think our country understands the mental health implications of gender-based violence. Yes, people understand that violence of any kind can be traumatic. But what exactly does that mean? I’m not sure that Indians have any idea.

Especially since we keep seeing headlines about extreme events that show the sheer lack of awareness regarding the matter. Yesterday, a gang-rape survivor and two activists helping her were arrested because the authorities misjudged a reaction caused by the trauma.

News of this nature tends to trigger me very deeply because gender-based violence has not only affected my mental health for more than a decade but has shaped my personality. I was sexually abused by different men when I was 8,11,14, 17, 21, and 22 years old. I am also a survivor of domestic violence and cruelty.

These events triggered an 8-year-long depression when I was 17. Today, even though I have recovered, I feel very unsafe to be a woman in this country. This fear penetrates into my daily life as I must live amongst men. It is not a pathological fear. It is not a phobia. I don’t let it affect my functionality. But it has a severe impact on my quality of life. It makes me feel subhuman. Unimportant. Weak.

I cannot say the same for fellow survivors because they do not have the knowledge of psychology or the access to mental health professionals that I enjoy. For them, this trauma can easily translate to mental health conditions like PTSD, phobias, anxiety, or depression. If the violence happened early in life, it could lead to more serious conditions like schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities), personality disorders, or some form of psychosis.

These conditions prevent individuals from good health and well-being. Even if they get the necessary help, it takes years of effort and willpower to overcome trauma. The worst part about trauma is that even in a completely safe environment, with no scope of violence, a survivor can be triggered by a seemingly non-dangerous event. They have to relive everything that they experienced over and over.

This can be in the form of realistic flashbacks, intrusive thoughts/images, or persistent nightmares. In my own experience, even the impact of a fruit falling on me from a tree takes me back to the moment when my husband was beating my face repeatedly.

Let me break down the entire experience from the original event to the trauma. When the violence first occurs, other than the obvious physical pain, there is a lot more a survivor feels. There is a shock because it’s very unexpected and unpredictable. Even if the person knows exactly when and how they will be hit, it is still shocking because we can never know how it will feel till it actually happens.

If the blow is on the face or head, it leaves a long ringing sound in the ear. It takes a while for the sound to stop. If it’s sexual violence, along with pain, the person feels intense levels of disgust and violation. They feel powerless and helpless; with a complete lack of control. Simultaneously, they feel a sense of defense as if their body is feeling very protective.

If restrained, the person feels powerless as well as defensive. They want to break free or fight back but they are being defeated. This causes feelings of guilt and shame.

If the person is just an innocent child, the violence, especially if sexual, may even cause some twisted sense of pleasure. Having their innocence robbed, they feel extreme levels of shame and disgust. Often this gets repressed in their subconscious, leading to a variety of mental health problems. It takes years of intensive therapy to help them identify this and forgive themselves for it.

With multiple hits, the pain, as well as the emotions, keep magnifying. This goes on till the person, as a defense, starts pretending they are not in that body. They try to escape mentally and experience what psychiatrists call dissociation, depersonalization, or derealisation. These are all ways of escaping.

It can feel like being distracted with thoughts of nothing, going to an old memory, feeling like this isn’t your body, or feeling like this isn’t reality. Usually, this happens subconsciously. If the violence is severe enough or happens on multiple occasions, it can lead to long-term mental illnesses like depersonalization disorder or derealisation disorder. Basically, the survivor starts experiencing these escape methods at other times in life too, with none of it being in their control.

One can imagine the kind of life people live with mental health issues like these. It’s almost impossible to live independently, be reliable, or maintain jobs/continuing education. As a result, the effect of the violence goes beyond that original event and shapes their relationships, effectiveness, and usefulness.

As if this struggle isn’t difficult enough, the lack of awareness causes people to mistreat survivors. They are judged, shamed, deprived of justice, asked to move on, labeled, and ridiculed. On top of it, they are invalidated by social influencers who insist that gender-based violence does not exist or is not as big a problem as survivors think it is.

In my personal experience, the reaction of society caused a lot more damage to mental health than the initial violence. My own depression started because I felt so unsafe and invalidated. It took years for my loved ones to accept that something wrong had happened to me, that it impacted me so severely, or that it’s not something that I can just forget in order to live in the present and carry on with life.

Not one of my abusers has ever faced any repercussions for doing what they did to me. They still live in this country freely and with dignity. I, on the other hand, have it much harder and it doesn’t seem like anything will change any time soon. Exercise some empathy and imagine what I and countless other survivors must be going through. But even if you don’t do that, we are still expected to continue living respectfully. Obediently. Quietly.