“Daddy issues” and diagnoses : Chiara E. Cooper and Paige L. Sweet gendered weaponization of mental health in intimate relationships
Material type:
ArticleSeries: Violence Against WomenPublication details: Sage, 2024Subject(s): Online resources:
In: Violence Against Women, 2024, First published online, 2 September 2024Summary: 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
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