dren. Mostly, all just seemed lost and were searching for a source of comfort and security. That is what we do at the Benton County Women’s Shelter. We give the women a sense of self-worth. We teach them how to beat the cycle of abuse. Domestic abuse in the United States is a large-scale and complex social and health problem. The family is perhaps the most violent group, with the home being the most violent American institution or setting today. Sadly enough, the majority of people who are murdered are not likely killed by a stranger during a hold-up or similar crime but are killed by someone they know. In one out of every six marriages, the wife is physically Fields 2abused. Every fifteen seconds a women is battered in the United States. Daily, four American women lose their lives to their husbands or boyfriends, equaling more than one-third of all female homicide victims. These numbers report that too much violence is directed toward women. Violent families are easy to describe but difficult to explain. Research on family abuse has, on a consistent basis, found that the phenomenon is associated with intergenerational transmission, low socioeconomic status, social and structural stress, social isolation, and personality problems or psychopathology. Traditional theories on the causes of domestic abuse focus on such factors as people’s individual characteristics and life experiences, including the presence of problems such as social and structural stress, social alienation, unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, past child abuse, personality disorders, psychopathology, and depression. While domestic abuse can be studied through “mental lenses” that are psychological or sociological in nature, it is important also to examine this issue from a medical/public health perspective. While many theories have been proposed to explain the causes of family abuse, one of the most useful has been the social learning th...
