The lived experience of abused women subjected to domestic violence

M.Cur.South Africa is called the Rainbow Nation with a variety of cultures and ethnic groups. The population currently is estimated at over 40 million, of whom 73% are women and children (Government Gazette, 1997:11). According to the Government Gazette ( 1997: 11) major disparities and inequalities exist between the different population groups, with reference to their socio-economic position. This inevitably led to major problems such as poverty and violence. One of these problems of violence seems to be domestic violence as stated by the South African Police Service (1998 : 10). They confirmed that the number of incidents of domestic violence in which especially women, children and the elderly are the victims, appear to be continually on the increase in South Africa. The South African Police Service (1998: 1) states that domestic violence is a serious crime against society, which can lead to repeated victimisation and repeated offending and sometimes eventually spirals into fatality. Domestic violence became a topic of interest to the researcher because of the number of women that came under her attention while working in the community services. Evaluation of the service delivery and understanding of domestic violence by community members and health care workers showed poor results with some still clinging to myths coming from cultural beliefs. According to Hague and Wilson (2000 : 157) the most common explanation for domestic violence continues to be a lack of compliance by the wife, coupled with historically long-lived ideas about the breadwinner's rightful authority. The goal of this study was to explore and describe the lived experience of abused women subjected to domestic violence and to describe guidelines for psychiatric nurse practitioners to support abused women who are subjected to domestic violence, in facilitating their mental health and optimising their ability to terminate the abusive situation. In conducting this research the framework of the Theory for Health Promotion in Nursing (Rand Afrikaans University, 2000) were used, which dealt with the internal and external world experience of the abused women. A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was used specific to domestic violence for this study. In-depth, semi-structured phenomenological interviews were conducted with abused women subjected to domestic violence who met the sample criteria. To ensure trustworthiness, the researcher made use ofGuba's (DeVos, 1998: 348-350) model of trustworthiness. Data analysis was done according to Tesch's (DeVos, 1998 : 343 -352) method. The results of this study showed that abused women who are subjected to domestic violence suffer a great deal of trauma and degrading due to physical or mental abuse of a loved one. Their trauma was evident by the experience of negative psychological dynamics that contributed to the shattering of the self. The degrading of the person eventually leads to the shattering of other relations and at the end to the realisation that they are victims