Research News

Supervised by  Dr. Hamida Akter Begum

Abstract

In Bangladesh rape is one of the most serious concerns in recent years. The incidence of rape and sexual assauU are increasing day by day but the need for specialist services to meet the needs of those affected, is gaining recognition very slowly. In the developed world it is well accepted that rape is a traumatic event, which produces major mental health impact on the victim. But in Bangladesh, though it has been recognized that rape victims need legal, medical and social support, the need for psychological service is still poorly understood. The objectives of the present study were to assess the mental state of rape victims thoroughly, to find out the exact nature and severity of psychological disturbances, that the rape victims suffer from; and to apply different psychological interventions, appropriate to the victim’s need. Twelve rape victims who were adolescent and young adult women, coming mostly from lower socio-economic class were selected for this study. The age range of the participants was between 11 to 22 years, who were currently living at various shelter homes. In depth interview along with Bengali version some popular psychological scales, such as Beck Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory-11 were used to collect data. Data was analyzed through transcript preparation, coding and categorization, with the help of three inter-raters. Inter-rater reliability was 0.82. The study found that rape victims were suffering from a number of psychological difficulties, such as sleep disturbance, feeling sad, feeling anxious, irritability, tearfulness, pessimistic outlook, headache, intrusive recollection of the rape event. avoidance of activity or stimuli that resemble rape etceteras, which were interfering with their well-being. Overall result indicates that victims were suffering from several mental health problems, and even several months/years after rape and psychological interventions helped them to recovcr to some extent. The study suggested that specialized psychological service should be incorporated for the rape victims immediately, which must be available just after rape. Beside this, service providers should get training about the psychological impact of rape and about how to take care of the victims with psychological sensitivity, which will minimize the chances of further psychological damage. The study proposed two models based on the qualitative data analysis of the case studies, which provide an understanding the relation between rape and mental health, and ways to restore the damaged mental health of the rape victims from multi professional and multi-dimensional approach.