Coercive Experience Research Articles

Stress coercitif en unité de soins intensifs psychiatrique : quel lien avec l’insight ?

The aim of this work was to study the correlations between the coercive experience level in patients in a psychiatric intensive care unit and clinical insight. We included 40 patients without specific diagnosis criteria at the end of their hospitalization in the intensive care unit. We assessed patients with the Coercion Experience Scale (CES) to measure their coercive stress level, and the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD) which measures clinical insight. A total of 42.5 % of our sample suffered from mood disorders, 50 % suffered from psychotic disorders and 7.5 % from other disorders. On the one hand, we found that patients’ coercive stress level was neither correlated with the awareness of their mental disorder nor with the awareness of social consequences of their mental disorder. On the other hand, we found that coercive stress level was significantly correlated with patients’ awareness of treatment efficacy and that the specific CES factor measuring coercion showed a strong trend to significantly correlate with patients’ awareness of treatment efficacy. These results seem to show that education about benefits of treatment is a key point to improve patients’ coercive stress in a psychiatric intensive care unit, more than an education about awareness of the mental disorder itself.

“The state has replaced the man”

This article offers an ethnographic analysis of everyday sociality and the welfare state on a council estate in England. Taking the case of means-tested benefits, it investigates how women's encounters with the welfare state come into conflict with their attempts to build and to maintain family homes. It argues that while the current benefit system offers women a minimum safety net, it also comes with a set of expectations about appropriate behavior that is contrary to the fluid and collaborative nature of women's daily lives. Although the article demonstrates that women contest the punitive effects of the policies by subverting the rules of the benefit system, ultimately it suggests that dependence on the benefit system is a deeply coercive experience. Overall, the article not only provides a critical commentary on current policy developments in Britain, but it also contributes more generally to anthropological challenges of normative models of citizenship.

Reexamining issues of conceptualization and willing consent: the hidden role of coercion in experiences of sexual acquiescence.

This study problematizes the literature's conceptualization of sexual compliance, predominantly defined as willing participation in, and consent to, unwanted sexual activity in the absence of immediate partner pressure. Using a feminist theoretical framework, we argue that covert forms of social coercion, including normalized expectations for heterosexual women to participate in sexual activity and maintain relationship satisfaction, ultimately pressure women into participating in unwanted sexual activity. In other words, immediate partner pressure is not necessary for a sexually coercive experience to occur. Results of the current study indicate that relationship control and media influence significantly predict sexual acquiescence, and women acquiesce to unwanted sexual activity in an effort to maintain relationships and partner satisfaction as well as to avoid negative outcomes. Women cite various forms of social coercion, such as fulfilling sexual scripts and relationship obligations, as primary reasons for participating in unwanted sexual activity without resisting their partners.

Use of seclusion for managing behavioural disturbance in patients

SummarySeclusion is a tool used by psychiatrists primarily to manage aggressive and disturbed behaviour that is presumed to be due to the patient's mental disorder. In most parts of the world there are guidelines to using seclusion that are designed to maximise a patient's freedoms and protect their liberty while providing a safe environment. Arguments against the use of seclusion revolve around the deprivation of liberty, the potential for misuse and the concept of seclusion as a form of social control, and patients generally report seclusion as a negative, coercive experience. There is little evidence that seclusion provides long-term benefits in terms of treating symptoms or reducing aggression, although the literature is mixed in this regard. Expert opinion recommends a combination of national policy, ward management and patient-centred interventions to reduce seclusion rates.

Gender Differences in Cognitive and Affective Responses to Sexual Coercion

This study examined gender differences in responses to sexual coercive experiences in mixed-sex (male-female) relationships. Participants were 112 women and 28 men who had experienced sexual coercion and completed measures of cognitive (attributions to self, attributions to the coercer, internal attributions) and affective (guilt, shame) self-blame, trauma symptoms, and upset at the time of the incident) with respect to their most serious or upsetting sexually coercive experience. The women were more upset than were the men at the time of the incident. Contrary to predictions, the men and women did not differ in the extent to which they attributed blame to themselves or the strength of their internal attributions, guilt, or shame. Both the men and women attributed more blame to the coercer than to themselves; however, the women attributed more blame to the coercer than did the men. The women reported more trauma symptoms than the men did which was related to the finding that more women than men had experienced sexual coercion involving physical force. These results are discussed in terms of the similarities and differences between men's and women's cognitive and affective responses to sexual coercion.

Sexual Fantasies of College Students With Coercive Experiences and Coercive Attitudes

Men sexually aroused by the portrayal of force in stories or pictures also self-report a high likelihood to rape if they could get away with it and have hostile and aggressive feelings toward women. The present study assessed males' and females' written sexual fantasies and the fantasies' relationship to past sexually coercive experiences and coercive attitudes. One hundred students answered questions about their fantasies and sex life, and their fantasies were scored for explicitness, theme, emotionality, and forcefulness. Significant main effects were found for coercive experience and force versus no force in the sexual fantasies. Those with coercive experience had more sexually explicit and less emotional fantasies and males had more actual sexual experience and more themes of much younger or older partners. More force in the fantasies was associated with greater explicitness, less happy feeling, and, for males, greater feelings of excitement after the fantasy and less satisfaction with their sex life.