‘How can we help when she won't tell us what's wrong?’ Professionals working with South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse

Paula Reavey · Bipasha Ahmed · Anamika Majumdar

43 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

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Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies Intimate Partner and Family Violence Gender, Health, and Social Inequality

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we explore some of the issues facing professionals in the UK currently involved in providing services for South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse. The study describes part of a wider Economic and Social Research Council funded project, based upon interviews and focus groups with both professionals and women survivors of sexual abuse. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews and two focus groups with 37 professionals including psychological therapists, refuge and project workers, from a range of organisations, our aim in this paper is to provide a discursive analysis of some of the key dilemmas faced by professionals working with sexual abuse in South Asian communities by exploring two central interpretive repertoires: ‘culture not self’ and ‘symptom talk as solution’. The analysis indicates that professionals face a series of dilemmas when working with South Asian women survivors. They highlight the tension between individualised models of personhood in many psychological therapies and the challenge to these by South Asian communities who hold a more relational view of the person. One of the strategies used by professionals to work with the tensions between ‘culture’ and the ‘reality’ of the survivor's pain was the translation of women's distress into symptoms of mental disorder. However, the consequences of this intervention raised some serious issues, including further pathologisation and stigma. The implications of these findings will be discussed in terms of how to understand the experiences of South Asian women from a more socially grounded perspective and to explore the issues they face in accessing and receiving appropriate services to deal with the aftermath of sexually abusive experiences. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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References

1992Trauma and Recovery 1987Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour 1978Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape 2015An Invitation to Social Construction 1987The scope of rape: Incidence and prevalence of sexual aggression and victimization in a national sample of higher education students.1988Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour 2001An invitation to social construction 2001The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment

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2022Understanding ethnic inequalities in mental healthcare in the UK: A meta-ethnography 2009Constructions of `Culture' in Accounts of South Asian Women Survivors of Sexual Violence

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