Getting to the roots of domestic violence and how to seek help during the lockdown | | Citizen Matters

The coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdown have led to a massive spike in instances of domestic abuse. We spoke with Dr Lata Hemchand, a Bangalore-based Consulting Clinical Psychologist about the psychological causes of such behaviour and also on how to seek help during these times: Further, if they have also grown up with fathers / male relatives who have beaten their wives, they tend to follow suit. Maybe, on the surface, the couple looks okay and everything seems fine but there are subtle ways in which the husband will insinuate or create a certain atmosphere where the wife starts feeling guilty. You can see that, in the current lockdown scenario, many parents are finding it difficult to handle young children at home and sometimes they tend to become abusive and even slap their child because of anger issues. Parents will have to be more innovative in trying to see how they can come up with new activities so that children don’t get irritable, cranky and throw tantrums. If the senior citizen is someone who is already dependent on the younger generation financially or for physical needs, and if they have mild cognitive deficits added onto it, it can make matters worse. The younger generation or the couple who are actually earning have to manage everything and they take it out on the elderly people because the aged find it difficult to comprehend due to their cognitive impairment, things have to be repeated again and again, they tend to forget… Change in these cases takes a long time and they have to be in therapy for years to work on these issues. In addition, IACP has started an initiative to provide free tele-counselling psychological support through its PARAMARSH helpline during the current COVID-19 crisis in the country.