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Abstract

Despite improvements, extant research and praxis has not yet given sufficient attention to nonphysical forms of intimate partner violence, including psychological and economic abuse. Furthermore, interventions for survivors (from clinicians, helpline workers, and other types of domestic violence advocates) are heavily geared toward needs associated with leaving an abusive relationship. Therefore, victims of nonphysical abuse who intend to stay in the relationship are tending to be overlooked. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 women who were experiencing psychological and economic abuse and intended to stay in the relationship, this study identified six unmet needs among that population: (1) to identify the causes of the current abusive situation; (2) to understand the effects of abuse; (3) to de-escalate hostility and talk through issues calmly and without blame, judgment, or accusation; (4) to explain to a social support team the decision to remain in the relationship; (5) to develop an individualized plan of action to address the abuse; and (6) to share advice with others in similar situations. Based on these needs, recommendations for future scholarship and praxis are offered.

Introduction

On an average day, agencies across the United States receive >20,000 domestic violence hotline calls (National Network to End Domestic Violence 2017). Of the 573,670 calls the National Domestic Violence Hotline fielded in 2018, 87% pertained to emotional or verbal abuse, 24% to financial abuse, and 15% to digital abuses, like excessive texting and GPS stalking (Chuck 2019). Indeed, 48.4% of women and 48.8% of men report being victims of psychological abuse, including being insulted or humiliated, isolated, manipulated, blackmailed, deprived of liberty, subjected to threats, or otherwise exploited (Breiding et al. 2014). Likewise, between 94% and 99% of domestic violence survivors report being subject to economic abuse, such as employment-related abuse, coerced debt, and prevention from accessing finances (Postmus et al. 2012). These figures suggest the need for practitioners to expand services for diverse, nonphysical forms of abuse.

In addition, scholars have identified a lack of scholarly research on best practices for assisting individuals who choose to stay in a psychologically or economically abusive relationship. Stylianou (2018) notes, historically, economic abuse has been the most understudied form of abuse and it is critical that the field focus on better understanding the nature and consequences of nonphysical abuse. Similarly, Voth Schrag (2019) posits, there remains a gap in our understanding of the experiences for survivors of economic abuse who have not sought formal support services and that garnering this understanding is essential in developing effective community-level prevention programming. Furthermore, in a nationally represented survey, Breiding et al. (2014) found many survivors did not access formal domestic violence or counseling services, but they continued to experience negative impacts from abuse. Geared primarily toward processes of leaving relationships and the provision of services—like emergency housing, transportation, legal advocacy, and counseling—for those who choose to leave, there is a notable absence of discourse on services for those who stay. To address this lacuna, I conducted interviews with 20 female survivors of psychological and economic abuse who have remained in romantic relationships with their partners to evaluate their specific needs.

Literature Review

My aim in this study is to address two primary gaps in extant knowledge regarding intimate partner violence (IPV): first, that scholars have thus far focused more extensively on physical violence rather than psychological, emotional, and economic abuse; and second, that strategies provided by practitioners and helpline workers tend to be focused on help for those who leave, rather than directed toward those who choose to stay in the relationship (Stylianou 2018; Voth Schrag 2019). Contemporary research reveals a disparity in terms of how victims who make the decision to remain in a relationship with their abuser are treated. Often, they are pathologized and consequentially revictimized by friends, family members, advocates, and/or health care service providers (Chantler 2006; Cole and Caron 2010; Vidales 2010). Furthermore, research demonstrates that victims of abuse have various reasons for deciding to stay in or return to abusive relationships, including practical and cultural issues (Bell and Naugle 2005; Brabeck and Guzman 2009; Christman 2009; Payne and Triplett 2009; Saunders 2008). Although a lacuna remains in terms of research on strategies and interventions for individuals who choose to stay in rather than leave an abusive relationship, recent research has begun to address gaps in current intervention practices, shift focus toward nonphysical forms of abuse, and address leave–stay behaviors from a novel perspective including developing information and screening processes (MacMillan et al. 2009), enhancing survivor financial literacy (Postmus et al. 2012, 2020; Sanders et al. 2007), initiatives such as Individual Development Accounts (Sanders 2014; Sanders and Schnabel 2006) and Moving Ahead Through Financial Management (Postmus et al. 2015), asset and capability development (Sanders 2013), using technology to address abuse (Glass et al. 2015), and creating effective individualized advocacy programs (VonDeLinde 2016).

Gaps in current intervention practices

Recent literature has addressed several of the existing gaps in treatment/intervention practices for IPV, from the point of view of praxis. Kulkarni (2019) addressed the need to rethink practices in light of an intersectional feminist, trauma-informed framework. Kulkarni (2019) recommended, more specifically, that it is important to increase survivors' input and role in the process and encourage interdisciplinary practitioner interchange to address survivors' diverse needs. Arroyo et al. (2017) conducted a review of studies on short-term interventions for survivors of IPV and found that, although short-term interventions are often effective, survivors require a more in-depth and expansive system of care. Rempel et al. (2019) conducted a review of studies on online interventions and the gaps in the focus of such resources. The authors noted that most of these interventions focused on the act of leaving rather than subsequent strategies. Therefore, despite having addressed some issues in intervention practices, scholars have not yet sufficiently suggested ways to ameliorate the absence of strategies for survivors who stay.

Nonphysical abuse research

Particularly in the past 5 years, researchers have increased their level of focus on emotional, psychological, and economic abuse, although it has still received less overall attention than physical IPV. Adams and Beeble (2019) addressed the effect of economic abuse on women's quality of life and psychological well-being, and found that it takes immediate effect and negatively impacts quality of life. The researchers recommended expanding the definition of IPV to include a specific metric for economic abuse. Duerksen and Woodin (2019) studied the effect of technology on IPV and a new type of nonphysical abuse using technology. They suggested that future work on how technology interacts with different types of domestic abuse is required. Despite this shift toward research on nonphysical abuse, it has not yet been translated to effective practices for practitioners, particularly in the case of those who choose to stay.

Leave–stay research

Although practitioners have not yet developed and implemented adequate strategies for those who stay, several recent scholarly articles have addressed the subject of motivation to leave or stay. Gilbert and Gordon (2017) studied individuals' intent to stay in abusive relationships; they found that commitment predicted forgiveness, and lower levels of violence mediated this correlation. Storer et al. (2018) provided a novel, phenomenological assessment of the process of leaving or staying in a relationship based on data from the #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft Twitter hashtag campaigns. The authors drew attention to the multiplicity and nuance of responses and suggested that this type of investigation into survivors' lived experiences of complex, structural barriers to leaving and motivations for staying in a relationship can lead to a more expansive understanding of IPV. Pugh et al. (2018) conducted a comparative study on Chinese and American perceptions of women who stay in physically abusive relationships. They found that factors including gender, cultural beliefs, and viewing IPV as a crime are predominant predictive factors in how people view those who decide to stay in or leave abusive relationships. Although useful, scholarly research on intention to stay or leave has not yet translated effectively to praxis. Past research underscores IPV's negative impact on the stability of survivors (Adams et al. 2013; Goodman et al. 2009; Voth Schrag et al. 2020) and the importance of developing an individualized plan of action to address abuse (Voth Schrag 2019). Following Storer et al. (2018) by focusing on participants' lived experiences with IPV, this study's methodology facilitated analysis of in-depth, narrative responses from a relevant sample.

Methodology

The research study was approved by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Institutional Review Board. This study operates within the feminist paradigm and more specifically it identifies with the position of feminist standpoint research. With its foundations stemming from the works of scholars such as Harding (1991), Smith (1987), and Hartsock (1983), feminist standpoint research assumes a position that evolved having the experiences of women as the locus. Having similar ontological, epistemological, and methodological beliefs as critical theorists, feminist standpoint research assumes that a “reality” exists that has been largely shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender-based forces that continue to be systemically promulgated through the aforementioned social structures and are therefore taken as being natural or real.

This study employed the use of intensive interviewing, a qualitative research method. Qualitative methods allow researchers to present the complexity of study subjects' experiences with regard to social, economic, and political systems and, in doing so, to advance alternative viewpoints (Bloomberg and Volpe 2008; Lazarus-Black 2007). By using qualitative methods, including intensive interviewing, the researcher can capture social life as experienced by the participants.

Using a purposive selection strategy (Palinkas et al. 2015; Patton 2002), I recruited participants from domestic violence agencies, counseling centers, hospitals, and other social service agencies in a Midwestern county of the United States. After contacting the agencies for permission, I asked administrative staff to post flyers with project information and my contact information in visible locations. After each potential participant made contact, I used screening questions to determine whether she met the following definitional criteria for inclusion in this study: be a woman 18 years or older, have experienced domestic violence, have made the decision to stay in the relationship with her abuser to work things out; and be willing to discuss her experience with abuse and decision to remain in the relationship. I identified a sample of 20 women from urban (n = 14) and suburban (n = 6) areas of the county who met the selection criteria.

I conducted intensive, 1-hour, semi-structured interviews with all participants to obtain qualitative data. The interview instrument for this study comprised 23 questions, modified from the Domestic Violence Survivors Assessment (DVSA) created in 1994 and revised in 2004. The DVSA has been pilot tested and has statistical support for validity and reliability (Dienemann et al. 2002, 2007, 2009).

Questions 1–12 concerned demographic measures (e.g., age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, education level, income, and the type of abuse participants had experienced). The participants' median age was 37 years (with a range from 19 to 60). The majority of respondents had obtained a high school diploma or General Educational Diploma (n = 8) or attended college or a trade school (n = 11). The median household income was $32,700, with a reported range from no income to $60,000 per year. Eight women were African American, nine were Caucasian, and three identified as Hispanic. Most of the participants in this study were married (70%; n = 14) with children living at home (85%; n = 17). Most study participants had experienced physical or sexual abuse in previous relationships but were unwilling to do so again and stated that they would leave a relationship if physical abuse, sexual abuse, or stalking occurred (90%; n = 18). All the participants in this study (n = 20) were experiencing psychological abuse at the time of the interviews, and 60% (n = 12) were experiencing economic abuse. When asked about their primary reasons for remaining in the relationship, 60% of the study participants said they wanted to work things out with their partner for the sake of their children; 35% stated simply that they wanted to work things out with their partner, and 5% cited concerns about finances in addition to wanting to work things out with their partner. To address the abuse they experienced, 50% of the study participants accessed informal resources and/or support, 25% sought formal resources and/or support, 15% responded to psychological abuse by verbally fighting back, and 10% regularly ignored their partner's abusive behavior.

The qualitative questions enabled me to obtain a detailed understanding of each participant's feelings, experiences, and perceptions: questions 13–15 solicited information on the length of the relationship and the length and severity of abuse; questions 16 and 17 were designed to better understand participants' rationale for remaining in the romantic relationship; questions 18 and 19 were designed to yield understanding of what the research participant did to address the abuse; and questions 20–23 were designed to better understand respondents' perception of the future and the advice they would provide to other individuals in a similar situation (e.g., “What advice would you give others to assist women in similar relationships with addressing the abuse?”). The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The narrative thematic analysis followed four stages: (1) coding the data, (2) developing themes from the data, (3) developing a conceptual schema from the data, and (4) writing up the analysis. In addition, a second coder was used to analyze the data and develop themes to control for investigator bias and to triangulate the data (Carter et al. 2014).

Each coder independently analyzed and coded the data. First, each coder reviewed the data searching for elements essential to identify participants' articulated needs. This process required the coders to review the narratives and convert them into measures of significant words, phrases, or messages. The coders sought out visible, surface content in the narratives (manifest content) and the underlying or implicit meaning in the narratives (latent content). Second, the coders wrote a paraphrase, phrase, heading, or label that described what was discovered in the narratives under study. This preliminary label served as a general indicator and was refined as data coding and analysis continued. Each time a new observation was identified the coder developed a new label.

Next, each coder identified the general themes and assigned a word or phrase that captured the general picture of the narrative. The coders then reviewed the themes, and the labeled narratives in them, to (1) ensure every element included within each theme related to the theme that was assigned and (2) identify themes that may be combined, deleted, were insignificant, did not relate to the research question, or had very few pieces of data in them.

The principal investigator and the second coder used Microsoft Excel to track their respective iterative narrative thematic analyses. After the data were analyzed and coded, the two coders met to discuss the codes. Where differences between coders existed, the pair engaged in peer reflection to discuss rationale informing differences and develop meaningful codes. Debriefing sessions were used to manage the tendency for bias and to minimize coders overlooking obvious information or failing to consider findings that emerged during interviews similar to that reported in ethnographic research (Mitchell et al. 2018). Furthermore, to control for coder bias, the principal investigator asked the participants to review the themes and to assess whether the coders' interpretations were representative of their experiences and beliefs. After receiving confirmation of the accuracy of the themes, the principal investigator drafted the research findings.

I conducted the interviews in a private location of each participant's choosing, assured them of their right to stop the interview and withdraw from the study at any time, and encouraged them to alert me if they experienced mental distress during the interview. After aggregating responses to each question, I identified six key concepts that reflect participants' needs, which are addressed in the next section.

Results

Based on narrative analysis of interview responses, I identified six common needs among the participants: (1) to identify the causes of the current abusive situation; (2) to understand the effects of abuse; (3) to de-escalate hostility and talk through issues calmly and without blame, judgment, or accusation; (4) to explain to a social support team the decision to remain in the relationship; (5) to develop an individualized plan of action to address the abuse; and (6) to share advice with others in similar situations. The following subsections include illustrative quotes from participants related to each of the six identified needs.

The need to identify the cause of abusive episodes

The first need participants articulated was to identify the cause of abuse so that they would be better able to prepare responses and develop strategies to mitigate their partners' outbursts. Fourteen participants described their situations as unstable and reported that they were often caught off guard. For example, Isabella noted:

His rage comes out of nowhere… I mean, I know there is something that causes him to snap out on me but I honestly don't know what it is… If I knew what the cause was and how to handle it without taking it in as the truth [about me], it would lift a heavy burden.

In this, Isabella recognized that she would be likely to internalize abusive language and suggested that access to explanations for the behavior's causes would help mitigate this issue. Similarly, Abigail stated, “It seems that anything I say or do results in me being verbally attacked. I can do just what [he] asks me to do and I get [verbally abused]… and if [he] tells me to do something and I do it differently than I get [verbally abused].” While Chloe said, “[He] gets mad, for whatever reason, and takes it out on me…I wish I knew when he was about to “chime up” or what causes him to get so angry, because then I could do or say something to calm him down—at least to the point where he's not trying to make me feel bad about myself.”

Although most of the participants stated that they felt the abuse was the result of their partner's personal issues, others felt that the abuse was the result of larger societal issues such as stress from unemployment or underemployment or not being able to provide adequately for the family. In this study, those participants who felt that the “verbal lashings” they received were a “normal stress response” rather than abuse also tended to perceive domestic violence to be the result of larger issues, such as cultural norms and aggressive socialization (n = 11). Furthermore, six respondents believed their own actions played a role in their partner's abusive behavior (citing behaviors such as not responding quickly enough to the needs of their partner or children as contributors to the verbal abuse they received).

The need to understand the effects of psychological abuse

Nine respondents identified the need to understand the personal effects of abuse, reporting that they “knew the abuse was having a bad effect on [them] but wanted to know what the effect was.” Sophia commented that:

I know that all the negative talking that he says to me is hurting me… It feels like a knife. Sometimes I think to myself it might be easier if he just hits me… I would know what to do if he hit me but I don't know what to do about him constantly belittling and threatening me.

Elizabeth addressed the physical effects of abuse, noting that “Literally, I start to feel physically ill when he goes on his rants. I know these feelings are caused by the abuse because I only feel this way when [the abuse] is happening.” Ella also expressed her need to discern the effects of her abuse, and framed them in relation to her diminished work performance:

I went to college, landed my dream job, outperformed everyone in my department to secure a promotion as lead engineer, and now I feel as if I am losing my commitment to my craft. What gets me is that I am not being hit or physically harmed. I never knew the effect that arguing could have on me. I don't really know what all of the effects have been.

Particularly given the nonphysical nature of the abuse, participants reported difficulty understanding and articulating a complete picture of its effects.

The need to learn to communicate without being combative, judgmental, or accusatory, to relay to a partner the consequences of verbal abuse

Fifteen respondents reflected on their need to develop strategies for more effective communication with their abusive partner, expressing that they “wished [they] had the words to explain to [their] partner the negative effect of the abuse and make things better” or “wanted to calm things down and work through issues without making the situation worse.” Olivia noted:

I just don't know what to say… He constantly [curses] me out and talks about me like I'm scum. I feel like he thinks he is the best thing since sliced bread and he's not… So I tell him… I know I don't make it no better, but I don't know what else to say. I don't want to be negative like him but that's the only way I can think of to get the message across to him that it hurts to be talked down to.

In some cases, as with Natalie, respondents actively expressed the desire to learn communication skills from a professional. She states, “When [he] starts an argument, we go back and forth…I think we need some sort of mediation. Someone to help us say what we mean and help us to understand one another.” In other narratives, respondents like Samantha wanted to learn to communicate better and felt that their partner needed to learn the same skills. She stated, “I know I could use some assistance when it comes to communicating with [my partner]… I am strongly considering talking to a counselor, but I am not responsible for [my partner's] abusive actions and I will not take responsibility for that…I want him to own his shortcomings, too.”

Of importance, many participants expressed a willingness to seek advice from a neutral third party to develop tools for more effective discussions concerning abuse.

The need to explain the decision to stay to friends, family, and service providers

Although participants expressed the importance of seeking support from friends, family, and victim advocates/counseling professionals, they noted that such support can be dependent upon expressing an intention to leave the relationship:

When I went to my friends to get help, everyone was so happy to help me until I told them I didn't want to leave my husband … One minute it was like I could get all the help I wanted, and the next minute it was like I was on my own.

Thirteen of the study participants expressed sentiments like: “I wish I could make my family understand my position,” “I need to be able to explain to my friends everything that went into my decision to stay,” and “If I only knew the right words to say, I could get them [friends and family] to understand my position.” Although participants articulated the importance of the social support system, they also expressed the need to seek more formal, professional support:

I need someone to help me… I mean, I have my friends and family, but they're just like me. They don't do this for a living. I need someone who understands what I am going through to help me, but I don't want to be badgered because I want to mend my relationship. A lot of the stuff that is offered to me is for people who want to leave. I need stuff from people who help with rebuilding relationships.

However, participants experienced similar frustration with the focus on leaving the relationship and the need to explain their decisions to practitioners as well.

Still more concerningly, Alexis discussed her experience of being treated badly by an agency worker when she expressed her intention to remain with her partner:

I went to the agency because I knew I could not do it alone … It looked like they had a lot of counseling programs that I could use. When I talked to the lady, she was really nice at first, we talked about my kids and my job… But when we got to my boyfriend and she asked me why don't I just break up with him since I had my own job, I was a little offended. I told her that I loved him and that I wanted my kids to have their father around. After that, her attitude changed… She was nasty to me. When I left there, I told myself, “I will never do that again.”

Participants' responses indicate a significant gap between their desire to seek both informal support (friends and family members who offered babysitting services, provided respite from the abuse and temporary financial assistance, etc.) and formal support (life coach or mentor, licensed childcare assistance, job-readiness programs, educational or vocational services, family reunification counseling, faith-based counseling, mental health therapy, financial literacy counseling, healthy relationship development assistance, parenting skills training, domestic violence services from domestic violence agencies, etc.), and their lived experiences with being required to explain their choices to others.

The need to develop an individualized plan of action to address the abuse

All 20 participants' narratives included a discussion of the need to develop a personalized action plan to address the abuse and provide for their health and safety needs. Many of these individuals sought assistance in the past but found the resources to be insufficient because they were designed for those leaving an abusive relationship. As such, participants emphasized the need for a personalized plan. Ava noted that: “I need a plan that is just for me. I have to think about a lot of stuff in my life, and some preplanned, cookie-cutter deal can't help me with all of my responsibilities.” Similarly, Grace addressed the need for an ongoing, strategy-centered approach to those who experience nonphysical abuse and intend to stay in the relationship.

They [professionals] are very good at what they do… but what they do is helpful for people who are getting really hurt. They don't have anything for me. It would be good if they could help us all in a meaningful way. I don't mean a one-time food voucher or a bus ticket to the next suburb, I mean something that will help me keep moving forward.

Isabella expressed that:

I have been thinking about this for years. I want to go back to school so that I can get a good job. I need to be able to take care of my family … To do this I have to think about financial aid for school, my older kids' tuition, daycare for my younger children, transportation for everyone because my husband's work hours don't allow him to transport the kids, and my responsibilities such as providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner for everyone. It is a lot to think about, and I need to come up with a doable plan, but it has to be a plan that considers everything that I need to do.

Such plans require extensive planning and prioritization work and, as participants' responses indicate, must be tailored much more precisely to the needs of each individual survivor.

The need to share with others in similar situations

Sixteen of the study participants expressed a desire to share their experiences with others in similar situations. Lily noted that:

I have been through a lot. I've been shot at, stabbed, beaten, raped, talked about, and ridiculed… But I'm still here. I want to tell my story because maybe it can help someone who is going through the same thing. I wouldn't wish what I've been through on my worst enemy, but if I can help someone else then my suffering won't be in vain.

Many of the participants positioned their intended advice in relation to concepts of the need to focus on the self as well as partners and children, particularly in the context of an abusive relationship. For example, Grace noted that, “If you make the decision to stay in the relationship because you feel it is worth saving, then it is up to you to manage your heart. This is one of the circumstances when you have to love yourself.” Olivia suggested that starting with self-love could lead toward other positive changes:

I realized that I had to start by loving myself more and when I did, I started to grow. I saw positive changes all around me. I now keep my house in order, I keep myself in order, and with a lot of hard work my relationship will be in order too. You have to love yourself if you want to grow.

Of importance, this need highlights the fact that participants in this study felt that, given the lack of attention paid to individuals who choose to stay in an abusive relationship, they were responsible for sharing their experiences and self-love advice with other survivors.

Discussion

The participants' responses have key implications for praxis among clinicians and helpline workers and highlight generative areas of future investigation in scholarly literature. Domestic violence literature underscores IPV's negative impact on the stability of survivors (Adams et al. 2013; Goodman et al. 2009; Voth Schrag et al. 2020) and the importance of developing an individualized plan of action to address abuse based on the lived experiences of survivors (Voth Schrag 2019). The first identified need, to identify what causes abusive episodes, indicates participants' self-awareness regarding their difficulties with differentiating abuse from normal stress responses and tendency to make allowances according to cultural beliefs and entrenched gender roles. This is in alignment with the findings of Pugh et al. (2018) that gender, cultural beliefs, and viewing IPV as a crime predict individuals' perceptions of other people who choose to stay in abusive relationships. In this study, participants' responses indicate that the same factors affect their ability to identify abusive behaviors, and thereby to prepare for them, suggesting that interventions should take this need into account.

In relation to the second need—to understand the effects of the abuse—participants expressed their difficulty identifying the personal effects of nonphysical abuse. Furthermore, they reported negative coping mechanisms, including self-medication through substance abuse, and instances of suicidal ideation. In terms of practical implications, domestic violence advocates should screen victims of emotional abuse for suicidal tendencies and develop specific therapeutic plans of action for those who intend to stay in the relationship. This finding is consistent with the recommendation to develop more in-depth and expansive systems of care as presented by Arroyo et al. (2017). In addition, developing an expanded definition of IPV that includes a specific metric for understanding economic abuse and its impact on victims' quality of life may assist practitioners offering services to this population (Adams and Beeble 2019). In relation to the third need—to develop more effective communication strategies—many participants self-identified as needing to communicate more effectively and expressed willingness to seek third-party assistance in the matter. Therefore, practitioners must increase their focus on providing communication skills that will help individuals who choose to stay work to improve the relationship, as recommended by VonDeLinde (2016).

Given that most participants who intended to stay in the relationship were willing to seek help highlights the fact that practitioners must be understanding and willing to provide effective strategies, rather than belittling or pathologizing victims (Storer et al. 2018). Respondents' unmet need to explain the decision to stay to friends, family, and service providers also suggests that domestic violence advocates should work to help survivors who stay with building their social support network. In alignment with Voth Schrag (2019), perhaps the most actionable need identified by this study's participants is to develop a personalized action plan to address the abuse. Given that all 20 participants identified this as a need suggests that practitioners and advocates must be well-versed in strategies for those who intend to stay in abusive relationships and should be capable of helping individuals develop a holistic plan of action to address abuse. Finally, in line with Kulkarni's (2019) recommendations, participants' willingness and desire to share with others in similar situations suggests that they are a valuable and underused resource in both scholarly and clinical work on psychological and economic abuse survivors who choose to stay.

Limitations

Although this study identified the articulated needs of victims of domestic violence who have made the decision to remain in and repair a relationship, the study design had several limitations. These included generalizability and sample size, participant disclosure, sample-selection bias, and the use of volunteers. This study was limited to a single interview of 20 participants and one follow-up conversation. The participants represent a unique subgroup of survivors of domestic violence who, by virtue of experiencing psychological and/or financial abuse and not physical and/or sexual abuse, view their abuse as less lethal. Small sample size in research studies has often represented a limitation with respect to the generalizability of findings. However, when results are considered in context, a small sample size can be beneficial for examining rare cases or little-known populations in depth. Likewise, only respondents who had experienced psychological or economic abuse and had made the decision to remain in their relationships were targeted for this study. Therefore, this study has a sample-selection bias. Finally, this study's design called on participants to volunteer. As such, there may be representation issues. Personal motivators could have prompted some individuals to participate and others not to. This may mean that nuanced elements are absent from the data and the results are therefore not representative of all victims of domestic violence who remain in relationships where psychological and economic abuse has occurred. Considering these limitations, this study contributes to the literature by focusing on survivors of nonphysical abuse in an effort to assist with better understanding the articulated needs of this population.

Conclusion

The participants' responses suggest the urgent need for helpline workers, clinicians, and other domestic violence advocates to reconsider their strategies for aiding those victims of nonphysical abuse who intend to stay in the relationship. Further scholarship should continue to draw on victims' experiences, and broadly consider the needs of a diverse group of survivors of different types of abuse. Although this study focused on women, as Laskey et al. (2019) have suggested, future work should attend more carefully to male survivors and those from the LGBTQ+ community to avoid marginalizing those groups of IPV survivors. Following the work of Storer et al. (2018), future research should take into account phenomenological narratives from survivors and provide recommendations for the application of those findings directly to clinical and advocacy practice. Advocates who want to make informed assessments and provide holistic services must identify the factors a survivor deems important and be responsive to these needs when designing an individualized safety plan.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Funding Information

There was no external funding for this study.

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The Forgotten Survivor: The Articulated Needs of Survivors of Psychological and Economic Abuse Who Stay

Abstract

Introduction

Literature Review

Gaps in current intervention practices

Nonphysical abuse research

Leave–stay research

Methodology

Results

The need to identify the cause of abusive episodes

The need to understand the effects of psychological abuse

The need to learn to communicate without being combative, judgmental, or accusatory, to relay to a partner the consequences of verbal abuse

The need to explain the decision to stay to friends, family, and service providers

The need to develop an individualized plan of action to address the abuse

The need to share with others in similar situations

Discussion

Limitations

Conclusion

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

Funding Information

References