Resilience and health of older women who have experience intimate partner violence earlier in life

When a traumatic event such as intimate partner violence occurs, resilience can help define recovery from that event. Women who experience the adverse event of intimate partner violence suffer injury, loss of physical and mental health, and possible death. Specifically, numerous women suffer injury and adverse health as a result of experiencing intimate partner violence (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg, & Zwi, 2002). The internal quality of resilience is what allows a person to mend or heal from trauma (Wagnild, 2009). Resilience is demonstrated by hardiness of spirit and a person's ability to return to their lifestyle (Atkinson, Martin, & Rankin, 2009; Earvolino-Ramirez, 2007). This study is designed to explore resilience scores among older women who have been exposed to intimate partner violence earlier in life as well as investigate resilience scores with type of violence exposure. In addition, the self-reported health status among older women exposed to IPV earlier in life will be compared with the self-reported health status of women who have not been exposed to IPV. Finally, it will be determined if resilience scores in older women vary by demographic variables. A quantitative design will use The Resilience Scale, The Severity of Violence Against Women instrument, and a health status 1 questionnaire will be utilized to collect data. Participants will be obtained through convenience and snowball sampling from women 65 and older living in southern New Mexico. These study findings show that older women who have been exposed to IPV between 10-49 years ago have the same resilience scores as older women who have not been exposed to IPV. In addition, self-reported health status is the same. Finally, demographic variables do not impact resilience scores among the two groups of older women. These findings indicate older women are able to recover from the trauma of IPV. They arc able to bounce back and go on with their lives and their long-term self-reported health recovers. When considered as a whole, the findings of this study lend hope to the idea that women are able to recover from the trauma of IPV exposure. Keywords: abuse, health, intimate partner violence, older women, resilienc