Perceptions of Emotional Abuse with Respect to Depression, Anxiety and Low Self-Esteem among Pakistani Women from Low Income Families

Abstract

In this paper, the implications related to emotional and psychological abuse lasted for a long time have been discussed with respect to the particular patriarchal society of Pakistan. The data has been collected through interviews, observations, and surveys from the randomly selected participants. The results indicate that the abuse not only damages the person’s (being abused) self worth, self esteem, self respect, identity, self image and self understanding rather destroys the construction of the whole family where kids are especially at risk for later emotional and psychological disorders. Abusers in most of the cases are not aware of their behavior’s worst implications; as no one dares to remind them of their abusive attitude. Thus, families trapped in such traumas often go unnoticed while promoting abusive emotions/perceptual information to the coming generations, through their biased beliefs, gender based baseless sayings, and fake spiritual knowledge in the name of religion, culture and norms.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p223