Paper: The Importance of Spirituality for African-American Women who Live with Intimate Partner Violence (40th Biennial Convention (October 31st- November 4th, 2009))

Tuesday, November 3, 2009: 10:35 AM

Patricia Kathryne Hindin, PhD, CNM
School of Nursing, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ

Learning Objective 1: distinguish the importance of spirituality for African American women as a coping mechanism for intimate partner violence.

Learning Objective 2: illustrate how spirituality is effective in mitigating the dangers of intimate partner violence for African American women.

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to illustrate the kinds of protection and support African American women might receive from family, friends and the community during episodes of intimate partner violence and to portray the phenomenon in the context of the women’s own stories. The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design as the methodology in conjunction with storytelling and analysis based in the African American oral tradition (Banks-Wallace, 2002). A purposive sample (N = 9) of African American women who self-identified as survivors of intimate partner violence participated in 13 storytelling sessions. Eleven themes were generated from the women’s stories which exemplify how protection and support may or may not be provided from family, friends and the community. The themes were identified as: fighting back, the psyche, the importance of spirituality, multigenerational abuse, the secret and the rule, family non-protection and non- support, family protection and support, the cake got bad ingredients and critical encounters.

The characteristics and the extent of protection and support the women received were inconsistent and in many cases nonexistent. The most significant knowledge learned from the study is that the spirituality of African American women is their greatest protection and support in the management of the stressors associated with intimate partner violence. The strong theme of spirituality in this study has extended the knowledge of the concept by providing rich descriptions of the activities that women engaged in and their perceptions of how these activities mediated intimate partner violence. All of the participants discussed the important role of spirituality in their lives and the positive influence these practices had on their ability to live through and help end abusive relationships. However in spite of their spirituality practices they still reported persistent mental health problems with depression, anxiety, anger and suicide ideation. African American women who have experienced intimate partner violence may benefit from spirituality based mental health interventions.

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