WHOT, a Novel Tool to Assist Women Victims of Violence: A Case Study in the Brazilian Amazon

Saulo William Da Silva Costa,Euzebio De Oliveira,Fabiola Pantoja Araujo,Ailton Lopes De Sousa,Marcos Cesar Da Rocha Seruffo,Yomara Pinheiro Pires,Fernando Augusto Ribeiro Costa

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3090747

Abstract

Violence against women is a problem faced in several ways, in various societies; however, the introduction of computational tools is something still little explored in this confrontation. Thus, it is necessary to invest in researches that bring technological development closer to the prevention, discovery, and combat of this form of violence. This paper presents the Women's Health Observer Tool (WHOT) that helps to build psychobehavioral profiles of women victims of violence, based on three features: i) recognition of facial expressions to infer emotions; ii) provision of digital questionnaires on intimate partner violence (IPV), adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and iii) generation of individual reports with cross-references of statistical analysis between the data obtained in each interview. To validate the tool, a case study was conducted with 50 women assisted in basic health units in a city of the Brazilian Amazon for prenatal care. The results are satisfactory for the use of the tool, which was able to infer emotions (joy, surprise, sadness, and anger), and the prevalence of sadness (25.24%) was verified among the interviewees. For ACE, the majority (21) of the women reported having suffered only physical abuse; as for IPV, the majority of the interviewees (27) reported no abuse; and 78% of the women (39) had no indicative signs of PTSD. The results further point out that there is 3.94 more chance that the group of women who reported any abuse, either in childhood or adulthood, compared to the reference group, would develop PTSD.

Highlights

V IOLENCE against women (VAW) is a global public health problem; it does not distinguish social class, cultural, professional, religious or educational background, and generally leaves sequels for the rest of the victim’s life. This violence, most often, happens within the domestic, family and/or professional environment, since the aggressor often lives with the woman, sharing the same space which generates a climate of tension and fear that can last for years; the problem is so alarming that, in a document released in 2019, the United Nations (UN) indicated that 17.8% of women and girls around the world reported physical and/or sexual violence committed by their partner in the last 12 months prior to the publication [1]
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) questionnaires (Phase B-2) are activated and released to her so that simultaneously and in real time WHOT both records her responses and tracks her facial expressions to infer the prevalence of emotions in each questionnaire
It should be noted that the graphs and tables are shown as pictures because they are print screens from the tool itself, since WHOT provides the data already in these presentation formats

Summary

Introduction

V IOLENCE against women (VAW) is a global public health problem; it does not distinguish social class, cultural, professional, religious or educational background, and generally leaves sequels for the rest of the victim’s life. While January registered a drop of 6.4%, February, March and April registered a rise of 13.35%, 17.89% and 37.58% respectively, according to data published in May 2020 by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights (MMFDH) Note that this gradual increase intensifies exactly when the measures of social isolation begin to be effective in the national territory, which further highlights a fact already verified before: the residence is not always the safest place for women [3]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion