On Friday, 15th of January, counselor working in The National Call Center for Victims of Crime, Ivana Prović, gave an online lecture which is a part of an online series of lectures regarding gender-based violence that has been organised by the team behind the National Call Center. Subject of the lecture was „Emotional abuse in intimate relationships – tactics and consequences“ and was presented through Zoom and Facebook streaming platform.
63 people have participated in the online lecture. During a lecture, they had a chance to gain useful insight into challenges concerning the emotional abuse in intimate relationships such as defining and detecting abuse by victims and their social network, as well as experts and researchers. A lecturer has also pointed out the overlapping between different forms of abuse, as well as the differences between each of them. Most common forms of abuse and short-term and long-term consequences have been defined. Lecture has also covered statistical reports and research data regarding the prevalence of emotionial abuse and various tactics in the general population, victims of abuse and has also compared gender differences. Data has shown that emotional abuse can often accure as an only form of abuse in an abusive relationship, even though the studies have put their focus more only on the emotional aspect of physical or sexual abusive relationships.
Lecturer has come to a conclusion that because of the difficulty with defining and identification of emotional abuse, it is very important to speak out about this problem and encourage researches to adress this form of abuse more and be aware of different tactics and consequences it might have so that they can help the victims they work with as well as they can. Moreover, some specific advice and recommendations have been mentioned, such as normalization of emotional reactions following the abuse and encouraging the victim to seek help from friends, family or professionals and the police.
At the end of the lecture, participants had a chance to ask questions or to share their experiences and comments in relation to the subject of emotional or psychological abuse. In this phase of the presentation, the lecturer has included topics such as different dynamics appearing in physicaly and emotionaly abusive relationships, differences between an argument between partners and abuse, focusing on jealousy induced behaviours.
