What is it about?
Domestic violence is a pressing global issue. Here we show how the pandemic and related lockdowns affected help-seeking by analysing the frequency and content of calls to a violence helpline in Finland during 2020 compared to the previous year.
Featured Image
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Despite its societal importance we remain unsure how large-scale societal catastrophes affect both the presentation of violence and help-seeking. Utilising a unique data set from a national helpline with over 13.500 calls we are able to underscore the ways in which services are used and, further, how they should be developed to maintain effectiveness even during unexpected circumstances.
Perspectives
The pandemic highlighted the need for the existence of accessible services for domestic violence. The disruption of traditional services and existing social networks together with the simultaneous increase in the probability of victims being confined with their violent partners or family members presented an acute and pressing concern. Here we are able to use a very detailed data on the content and frequency of calls to a violence helpline during the pandemic compared to the previous year. It provides a stable comparison point as this is nearly the only service that remained similarly available in 2020 as in 2019. We propose a similar stable nationally organised system as a crucial service component to ensure the provision of adequate services even during exceptional times.
Jarno Tuominen
University of Turku
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Changes in frequency and form of domestic violence in calls to violence helpline during COVID-19 in Finland., Psychology of Violence, September 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/vio0000474.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
