Consequences of Sexual Harassment - Research Proposal Example

Abstract

The long-term impacts of sexual harassment (rape), whether during someone's childhood or adulthood, can encompass numerous emotional, psychological, and physical problems. The experience of sexual harassment or mistreatment at any age and whether female or male can have devastating, long-lasting impacts on every aspect of an individual being and life – on their body, their mind, their behavior, feelings, and thoughts. The following are some of the common effects now being recognized and approved as the long term emotional consequences of sexual assault on mots victims and survivors, isolation and loneliness, numbness fear, vulnerability, and sadness, or anger. Although it is arguably right that it is not inevitable that all people who undergo rape will suffer from all impacts– the mix, complexity, and severity is a unique experience for different people. This paper reviews the most common long-lasting emotional effects of rape.

The Long Term Emotional Consequences for Victims of Rape

Introduction

This study aims to focus on the long-lasting emotional consequences of rape and their effects on the well-being of the victims, especially surrounding the health diagnosis of these impacts on the survivors.

Rape involves an attack upon an individual, and it impacts physiological, physical, and social well-being. According to McCombie (2009), the physiological impacts of rape encompass violation of autonomy and intrusion upon inner space. It is arguably right the most immediate person affected by sexual violence is the victim. However, the impacts of sexual abuse can also extend far beyond individual victims, affecting their closest relationships as well as having undesired outcomes in communities and society at large. Another dreadful effect of a rape victim that might damage victim emotional well-being is social effects. The victims become vulnerable to verbal attacks on compliance or seduction that often emerge from public perception towards rape. Indeed it is evident that rape can have long term consequences on the victims—these paper explorers various long term its long term impacts on victims.

Literature Review

Long Term Emotional Effects of Rape

According to therapists, the emotional impacts of rape vary from one victim to another since they are all affected in different ways. They tend to recover at different rates as well. However, from the engagement with victims, they have identified some common effects of sexual violence and rape. In the research, Beitchman et al. (1992) identified that it is a severe problem with severe long term impacts. It has also been established that the effects can endure for many years and can sometimes take many years before they manifest. For example, child effects of sexual victimization might manifest in adulthood.

The most common emotional effects of rape to victims are disassociation for most rape survivors; the initial reaction to rape is individual shock and emotional numbness. The majority of people at first feel calm in the attempt to shut off what transpired. The response can sometimes surprise their families and friends who would expect survivors to be distraught immediately after the ordeal. Although disassociation is a natural response mechanism, and it is normal. Anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and fear have also been linked with a history of childhood sexual abuse (Beitchman et al., 1992). Usually, after several days one might begin to have a range of other feelings such as shock fear and anger.

Depression in Rape Victims

Depression is another dominant long-lasting impact of rape on victims. In their research, Er, İstanbullu, and Arik (2019) identified that more than half of women who have been raped in the past develop depression aftermath the ordeal. Survivors of rape often endure depression, a mood for a disorder that happens when one has feelings related to hopelessness and sadness last for long periods, and devastate the standard thought patterns. Rape-related shame and experiential avoidance tendencies might alleviate symptoms of depression in rape survivors (Er, Instanbullu & Arik, 2019). In the long term, depression affects the victim affect the victim behavior as well as their socialization with other people. 

It is arguably real depression does not discriminate—it can affect any victim of any religion, age, race, gender, or ethnicity. According to scholars, an estimated 1 million adults who were victims of sexual assault in childhood experienced depression in adulthood. It is normal for victims of rape to have feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and unhappiness. If these feelings last for an extended period, it might be an indicator of depression among the victims. 

Extreme Anxiety in Rape Survivors

Anxiety sometimes manifests as a long term impact of sexual victimization. The loss of bodily autonomy by the victims can lead to extreme anxiety in their afterlife. The victims might live in fear of the attack of a similar attack in the future. In their research, Pickel and Gentry (2016) identified that for a non-prototypical condition, they have a high possibility of developing mild anxiety than PSTD. In some cases, the victims might experience panic attacks while others might develop agoraphobia and become freighted of leaving their homes. In has also been established that in some situations, victims might develop a chronic fear of the individual who sexually assaulted them. An ideal example is when a tall, fair-haired person raped someone with blue eyes might instinctively develop a phobia of all men who match the physical traits.

Posttraumatic Stress (PTSD) in Rape Victims

Posttraumatic stress (PTSD): an individual who survived sexual exploitation maybe in childhood might experience intense memories of the abuse. According to Castelli and Goodman (2014), the perceived intensity of expressed emotions was intense when children were narrating the alleged abuse compared to when they talked of neutral topics in rapport building. The reason is because of the dull memories of the sexual harassment events. In some situations, the dark memories might be disruptive that they lead to the victim losing track of his or her surroundings. An individual might as well develop a related condition known as complex posttraumatic stress (C-PTSD). It results in chronic fear of loneliness in addition to signs of PTSD. In other cases, victims with C-PTSD in the future might experience personality disruptions.

Personality Disruptions

Sexual harassment can lead to personality disruptions, the most common being a borderline personality. The behavior associated with personality disruptions could be getting used to abuse. An ideal example is a characteristic of borderline personality is the fear of loneliness (Castelli et al.,2014). In some people, the fear might not be adaptive in adulthood. Although avoiding loneliness might protect a person from sexual abuse, for example, in childhood, when one is more vulnerable. Attachment issues in other individuals might be long term consequences of sexual victimization: Rape victims might find it difficult to form healthy attachments with the rest of society. This is especially evident among children who have been sexually harassed.

Flashbacks

Flashbacks are memories of the trauma that the victim had endured, which take place in the current moment. Recent studies established that many rape victims experience this flashback, which seems like they are undergoing the experience all over again. The study further suggested that the victims find it difficult to connect to reality (Pickel & Gentry,2016). Some were found even to have worse flashbacks, which make them feel the presence of the perpetrator. Flashbacks may be triggered by the sense of body odor that smells like that of the preparator or even a voice that resembles that of the perpetrator.

Sleeping disorders

Sleeping disorders have been rampant in cases of women who have undergone sexual disorders. The victims of sexual violence may lack sleep at night as they fear that the perpetrator may come back and harm them. The victims tend to stay a lot indoors and have short or long naps. Results from a recent study established that trauma associated with rape cases may cause the victims sleeping patterns to be disrupted (Simmons et al.,2018). The interviews in the study explained that they were finding it hard to sleep. Others said they now slept a lot, and others indicated that they were always keeping indoors for fear of being attacked again.

Panic attacks

Panic attacks are defined as the sudden feeling of having extreme fear and anxiety in situations that don't have to seem to threaten someone. Rape victims are highly affected by panic attacks as the recent research established. Traumatic attacks may make the victims experience this attack now and then. The traumatic events make the victim have an extreme fear of passing somewhere dark as they start thinking that someone will pounce on them and assault them (Lowe et al.,2017). Panic attacks were found to have been on the rise in the lives of victims of Traumatic experiences.

Bustle

Bustle is defined as the effect of traumatic experiences, which causes the victim to have trouble focusing and low vision. A recent study found that many sexually abused women who had physical violence with the perpetrator are likely to experience bustles now and then (Simmons et al.,2018). Some interviewees explained that while they were presenting a project in class, they would experience a bustle, which makes them blackout and just stand there numb. The effect of bustles may cause the person to fail to accomplish their goals as they can't stay focused for long.

Lack of self-drive

Victims of rape or sexual abuse may find it hard to show intimacy to their loved ones or spouses. The experiences alter their bodies as the body may fail to react emotionally as they wish. The sex lives of the victims of sexual violence are affected by the psychological reactions they had after the experiences. The leading cause of this was that the traumatic event is still tied to their psychological state, which makes the body fail to respond emotionally (Lowe et al.,2017).

Research results suggested that child negligence and emotional abuse have severe adverse impacts on adolescent mental health and guarantee attention offered to other forms of child abuse (Mills et al., 2013). Adults who experienced sexual abuse as children might develop unhealthy attachment patterns. In the future, such people struggle with intimacy or be too anxious, creating close attachments.

Research result suggested that exposure to highly emotional events has a significant impact on neurocognitive function even in the absence of psychopathology (Gregoire et al. 2018). It has the potential of causing addiction. It has been identified that sexual harassment victims are 26 times more likely to abuse drugs long run. Drugs such as alcohol are perceived by many to help numb the pain of sexual assault. Although, after some time, drug abuse often results in the development of various concerns, it does leave not only psychological scars on the victims but also has long-lasting health impacts. An individual who has been raped in the past might sustain bruises and cuts. 

Emotional problems might as well be stemming from the underlying issues. Victims of rape also have sustained severe injuries such as broken bones, damaged genitals, and knife wounds. In other cases, the survivors tend to chronic pain without a visible physical cause; all these pent up issues lead to the emotional stress of the victim and have long term consequences in their lives. Some victims experience long term physical harm such as sexual dysfunction and fertility issues; they serve as a reminder of the dull events of rape or even developing sexually transmitted diseases. It is also most likely for sexual harassment to result in pregnancy, adding more mental torture to the victims. In situations where a child impregnated, giving birth might both emotional and physically dangerous.

A recent study by established that traumatic that exposure to traumatic experiences altered the early processing of emotional words (Gregoire et al.,2018). Rape victims tend to lag behind in the processing of emotional expressions. The study was done on victims of rape who didn't have any signs of the post-traumatic disorder. According to the survey, the traumatic events were responsible for modulating the early processing of emotional information. Rape victims have been found to have been profoundly impacted by the trauma in their neurocognitive function.

Methodology

In the quest to answer this research question, qualitative methods would be most suited in finding the answers. An ethnographic study would be practical since it would allow the researcher to observe and understand the long term emotional consequences of rape victims and how they respond in a particular context. This would aim to aid the researcher in an attempt to understand the relationship of participants who are victims of their family members. It would also include a nonrandom sampling technique for acquiring a combination of characteristics required for the study. Especially, purposive sampling, to have the ability to get close and personal enough with all the participants to have them share details about their personal experiences to aid in getting the answers.

The chosen participants responded and confirmed their consent to participate in this study, started with visiting their family's family and interviewed the family members. Since ethnography shares similarities with participant observation study, we had to create a relationship with the rape victims who were under scrutiny, particularly with those who had the signs of mental illness, in order to assess the changes that take place in behavior since sexual assault ordeal. Once we established trust established, we came in and started recording the interviews about the emotional impacts, and how participants responded to them.

The data obtained were compared to the findings from the past the impacts of rape on the survivors' mental and physical illness. A list of operationalized concepts such as anger issues, affirmation, depression, and anxiety, was created to categorize the nonverbal actions towards the victims with emotional stress challenges. Collection, both verbal and nonverbal accounts, offered a better representation of the actual behaviors of the rape victims. An assessment of the feedback in accordance with the findings around as compared to the observed traits of the victims about before the sexual harassment. Once this was done for chronic mental illness, the results were cross-analyzed compared to the different behavioral changes of the casualties. The application ethnography allowed us to go into depth and lengthy assessment of the victim's traits and the impacts of mental illnesses.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, in the review above, we have identified that Rape victims are significantly more depressed, tend to be anxious, and fear their surroundings than control subjects. All these factors lead to more extreme mental conditions such as a high degree of depression and anxiety. Sexual assault shares correspondence to the crisis, and every person handles emergencies in different methods. Some victims go into shock after experiencing traumatizing moments or enduring overwhelming fear, anxiety, anger, or shame. The emotional response to sexual harassment is complicated and often dangling too many people. Victims should always have in mind that their experiences and feelings are not abnormal and that they are not the only ones to undergo such things. Those surrounding such people must have patience with the recovery process. It could take more than a decade for the healing to occur, and the healing period varies for different individuals. Rape can affect a person feelings about sexuality in the future, and he or she finds that sex stirs up anxious emotions related to the assault