Sexual Abuse and Mental Health in Humanitarian Disasters

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the importance of addressing mental health issues due to sexual violence in humanitarian disasters. It provides an overview of the relevance of sexual violence in conflict and its connection to mental health concerns and a heightening of the impacts of the humanitarian disaster. Sexual violence further destroys societies and increases the repercussions of the humanitarian disaster for decades after the conflict has ended. The very high levels of sexual violence that accompany humanitarian disasters are not inevitable. Underlying cultural and societal beliefs that exist before the humanitarian disaster occurs can be aggravated and brought to surface to further exasperate the negative impacts. Large scale public health initiatives that use marketing such as radio, billboards, social media, and television advertisements for example can be helpful and impactful for changing awareness and consciousness of societal norms and assumed inevitabilities that happen in societies. Humanitarian disaster research has revealed that it is common for individuals to view sexual violence as normal and for perpetrators to minimize the effects of it. However, this is a coping strategy that does not take away from the individual, societal and familial mental health effects of sexual violence from humanitarian disasters.