DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

Domestic Violence in America

Domestic Violence in America

Introduction

Domestic abuse in the United States is a large-scale and complex social and health difficulty. The family is perhaps the most violent group, with the home being the most violent Citizens of America institution or setting today. Sadly enough, the greater part of citizens who are murdered are not probable killed by a stranger during a hold-up or alike crime but are killed by someone they know. Not surprisingly, the Center for Disease Control plus prevention has recognized interpersonal violence as a main public health complicatedness (Letellier, 2004).

Current estimates suggest that three to four million females are the preys of physical abuse by their intimate partners. According to the FBI, a number of form of domestic violence takes place in half of the homes in the United States at least once a year. In reality one out of every six marriages the wife is physically abused. Every fifteen seconds a females is hammered in the United States. Daily, four Citizens of America females lose their lives to their husbands or boyfriends, equaling more than one-third of all female homicide preys. These numbers account that a great deal violence is in the direction of females.

Discussion

Historically, domestic violence has been a downplayed and, frequently times, culturally condoned, Citizens of America tradition. In the colonial period, laws derived from English common-law permitted a man to beat his wife when she acted in a manner that he believed to be inappropriate. For example, the so-called "Rule of Thumb" law, which permitted a husband to beat his wife with a stick that could be no larger than the circumference of his thumb, was in effect until the end of the nineteenth century (Letellier, 2004).

The issue of domestic violence, particularly wife abuse, first gained national concentration in the year 1974 with the publishing of Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear by Erin Pizzey, the creator of Chiswick's Females's Aid, a protection in England for hammered females. Pizzey's work helped to stimulate feminist concern and outrage over wife beating, verbal abuse, financial restrictions and social isolation of females by their husbands. Shortly thereafter, the females's liberation movement, through the National Organization for Females (NOW), advocated for the end of violence against females and sought improved social services for hammered wives. NOW also was actively engaged in promoting shelter homes and lobbying congressional leaders for legislation that would result in better treatment and protection of females's health and well-being (Gillioz, 2007).

The medical profession was greatly affected by the advocacy of the females's liberation movement and has, in recent years, attempted to combat this social ill both by itself and in coordination with the legal and social service professions. For example, beginning in 1992, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, required that all accredited hospitals implement policies and procedures for identifying, treating and referring preys of abuse . This included in-service training programs for staff members of their emergency departments and ambulatory care facilities (Letellier, ...