THE PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGN TO INCREASE FAMILY EMPATHY IN THE BATTLE AGAINST VIOLENCE

I would like to thank everyone for their comments over the past two weeks. Forming a new anti-violence structure of government is certainly an interesting idea I had never considered. In Italy recently, people were so sick of the corruption in their government, an email was sent prompting millions of people to congregate, protesting that they had had enough. So many citizens today feel this way about the violent world we live in and the increasing violence in daily life. Many other comments on the blog centered round the age old question of whether we need to fix the violence in ourselves first before we take aim at stopping the violence of perpetrators. Since I am not a great philosopher I cannot give an answer to this question. Clearly human beings are very aggressive and can hurt others given the right social cues (e.g. Milgram experiment). But in my work and dialog with citizens around the world in post-conflict societies it has come to my attention that in many violent situations there is a breakdown in empathy especially in the home. I would like to share a story that still disturbs me after hearing it 2 years ago in Peru. A clinician told me of the big problem of domestic violence fueled by political violence in Peru. The WHO study found Peru to have one of the highest country rates of domestic violence. This clinician said that she had helped a patient from a small Andes village that was repeatedly beaten by her spouse. She was able to work with the husband and wife to reduce this situation. The clinician felt very good about her success. The patient then went on a little trip to see her family in another village. I do not know where her husband was when the following events unfolded. She came home and found her teenage son hanging from a tree outside the kitchen window. Her brother—the boy's uncle—had killed the boy over a minor land dispute with this family. The uncle was arrested for three days and then was released by the major, who was a friend of the uncle. That was the end of his prosecution. The woman came back to therapy and the clinician was told she would be harmed if she tried to interfere in this case. The clinician was devastated.  And so she shared with me this story. I was also overwhelmed by such a cruel act by the boy's uncle. This is a story of a total breakdown in empathy. You can imagine that if you have family violence with little to be empathic to your immediate family members, how can you have any regard at all for your neighbors or for people who are different from yourself. The battle against violence must work first to increase empathic relationships in the home.

Looking forward to your comments on this aspect of the declaration.  Also, I will eliminate as suggested the term "poor" as in "poor women".
 

Comments

[angela]

In Italy, a statistic study said that 90% of violence is domestic. Husbands, brothers, uncles and often boyfriends and male friends abuse and harm and kill their female relativies. If you give a look inside Italian families and Italian Istitution and Goverment you realize how we lost empathic relationships in the home.
We need to understand what has been broken inside our emotions...lost hope and self-esteem...we are only people of rage and hate.
Angela

[M. Hurst]

I agree that stemming violence in our society and world requires a close examination of the violence that takes place within the family. I am often struck by the seeming belief in my culture (the United States) that violent people are "monsters" that exist in a vacuum, apart from a human and familial continuum. More often than not, violent and abusive adults were once victims (or perhaps more accurately, are continued victims) of childhood abuse, unprotected and sometimes ostracized by family, neighbors, and society.

It seems that an important step in encouraging empathy within the family would be to educate local communities about how to recognize specific signs of abuse, ways of providing interpersonal acknowledgement and support to victims of violence, and formal actions that can be taken to protect the powerless and vulnerable from abusive family situations. Teaching people how to navigate the discomfort of "invading" the privacy of the abused individual or family may go a long way toward stopping the cycle of abuse victims become abusers. I suspect that this type of "personal" public health education might penetrate the consciousness of both the family, and the larger social structures.