“Daddy issues” and diagnoses : gendered weaponization of mental health in intimate relationships
Cooper, Chiara E.
“Daddy issues” and diagnoses : gendered weaponization of mental health in intimate relationships Chiara E. Cooper and Paige L. Sweet - Sage, 2024 - Violence Against Women .
Violence Against Women, 2024, First published online, 2 September 2024
Through life story interviews with victims of psychological abuse, we offer new empirical evidence for a tactic of coercive control: mental health weaponization. Shaped by structural vulnerabilities, mental health weaponization involves three key features: gendered accusations that victims are “crazy” and emotionally unstable; leveraging victims' past traumas against them, particularly that they form “bad” attachments to men; mobilizing victims’ mental health diagnoses or symptoms against them to cast them as noncredible. This article enhances our understanding of controlling and abusive tactics in intimate relationships by showing how they are rooted in social inequalities at the intersection of gender and mental health status. (Authors' abstract). Record #8978
COERCIVE CONTROL
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE
MENTAL HEALH
PERPETRATORS
PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL
UNITED STATES
“Daddy issues” and diagnoses : gendered weaponization of mental health in intimate relationships Chiara E. Cooper and Paige L. Sweet - Sage, 2024 - Violence Against Women .
Violence Against Women, 2024, First published online, 2 September 2024
Through life story interviews with victims of psychological abuse, we offer new empirical evidence for a tactic of coercive control: mental health weaponization. Shaped by structural vulnerabilities, mental health weaponization involves three key features: gendered accusations that victims are “crazy” and emotionally unstable; leveraging victims' past traumas against them, particularly that they form “bad” attachments to men; mobilizing victims’ mental health diagnoses or symptoms against them to cast them as noncredible. This article enhances our understanding of controlling and abusive tactics in intimate relationships by showing how they are rooted in social inequalities at the intersection of gender and mental health status. (Authors' abstract). Record #8978
COERCIVE CONTROL
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE
MENTAL HEALH
PERPETRATORS
PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL
UNITED STATES