Internal Barriers to Help Seeking for Middle-Aged and Older Women Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence

ABSTRACT. There has been relatively little qualitatively or quantita-tively published research to guide the field in identifying and addressing barriers to seeking help for older women who experience domestic vio-lence. Women over the age of 45 have seldom been participants in research on domestic violence. This paper describes results from a qualitative study that focused on reactions to and internalization of abusive behaviors of an intimate partner. Twenty-one focus groups were conducted with 134 mid-dle-aged and older women. Analysis of the data identified six factors that describe reactions to abusive behavior that become barriers to help seek-ing, including self-blame, powerlessness, hopelessness, the need to pro-tect family, and the need to keep such abuse secret from others. Thes