Impact Of Stalking Research Articles

The Impact of Stalking and Its Predictors: Characterizing the Needs of Stalking Victims.

Victims of stalking suffer severe and varied impacts requiring assessment and treatment. Research to inform support is limited. This study examines a national sample of stalking victims to identify the types and prevalence of impact reported and the predictors of impact. A secondary analysis of 258 stalking cases reported to a stalking charity was conducted. Four categories of victim reported impact were coded; psychological and substance abuse, physical health, practical impact on life, and impact on others. Stalking duration, severity, the diversity of stalking behaviors, and the relationship between the victim and perpetrator were investigated as predictors of impact. In all, 48 types of impact were identified with victims experiencing an average of four types. Psychological impact was the most prevalent (91.5%). Several new forms of impact were identified including a variety of impacts on persons known to the victim (e.g., children, friends) in 35.3% of the sample. Increased diversity of stalking behavior was predictive of impact in all models (explaining 11% of the variance in total impact scores), except for physical impact which was not analyzed due to low prevalence. Stalking impact was prevalent and varied, suggesting that victims (and potentially those close to them) require trauma-informed support from clinicians. Future research should include the development of a stalking impact index to improve the consistency of research and clinical assessment of need.

The Impact of Stalking-Related Fear and Gender on Personal Safety Outcomes.

Research has consistently found that more women worry about their personal safety and feel vulnerable to most every crime compared with men suggesting there is a gender fear gap. Environmental risk and prior victimization history impact concerns about personal safety. However, few studies include stalking as part of the victimization history. Two reasons studies may not include stalking are that adding more questions to a research assessment increases participant burden and measurement of stalking has not always been clear. The current study used a community sample of 2,719 men and women and a five-item stalking assessment to examine the prevalence and impact of stalking and stalking-related fear on concern about personal safety, perceived vulnerability to an attack, perceptions that risk of victimization is higher due to personal characteristics, discomfort when thinking about safety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms controlling for victimization history, age, and environment risk by gender. Overall, 30% of women and 12% of men experienced stalking using the extreme fear standard which is double the national rates. Stalking-related fear, for both women and men, was associated with all of the outcome measures. Furthermore, there were significant main effects of gender after controlling for stalking-related fear on three of the outcomes consistent with the gender fear gap. Based on these results, research studies should consider including stalking as part of the victimization history as it is likely to impact health and mental health outcomes as well as personal safety concerns and responses for both men and women.

The Stalking of Psychiatrists

Healthcare professionals are known from previous studies to be at risk from stalkers, and mental healthcare professionals, particularly psychiatrists, are thought to be at higher risk. However, no previous large-scale study has investigated this among psychiatrists. This questionnaire-based survey of 10,429 UK psychiatrists aimed to investigate the prevalence, nature and impact of stalking of UK psychiatrists. Of the 2,585 psychiatrists who submitted valid responses, 21% thought they had been stalked; the experiences of 33% met current legal criteria and 10% met strict research criteria. Three percent of respondents were currently being stalked; 2% reported that their stalking had begun in the past year. Of those who had been stalked, 64% were stalked by patients. The most commonly reported motives were intimacy seeking and resentment. Stalking persisted for over a year for 52% of victims. The stalking was intrusive, disruptive, and had significant impact. Organizational and individual responses varied in scope and effectiveness. Stalking of psychiatrists is therefore an important professional hazard with a serious impact. Improvements in organizational responses to stalking are needed.

Stalking and harassment of mental health professionals by patients in a community forensic service

This study used a cross‐sectional survey design to investigate the incidence, experience and impact of stalking and harassment by clients on mental health professionals working in a community forensic mental health service. A response rate of 37% (N = 45) was obtained. A majority of respondents (88.9%) reported being harassed in at least one of the specified ways on at least one occasion. Of these respondents, 42.2% met the operational definition for stalking used by the study. The results support suggestions in the literature that mental health professionals may be at heightened risk of being stalked, and that it has both a personal and a professional impact. The aim of this paper is to describe the study, to highlight the implications for organisational practice, including provision of support and training, and to consider implications for future research.

Lifetime prevalence and impact of stalking: Epidemiological data from Eastern Austria

Background and Objectives: Community-based studies of stalking in European countries are scarce. The aim of the present study was to replicate the epidemi- ological study by Dressing and colleagues, which analyzed a sample drawn from a mid- dle-sized German city (Dressing et al., 2005) by using a general population sample (urban as well as rural citizens) from Eastern Austria. Methods: In a survey of 401 persons from Eastern Austria we tried to replicate the study on the lifetime and point prevalence of stalking in a German urban community. The survey included a stalking questionnaire and the WHO-5 well-being scale. Results: Nearly 11% of the respondents (n = 43, 37 women, 6 men) reported having been stalked. Victims scored significantly lower on the WHO-5 well-being scale. We found no significant differences in stalking and well-being between rural and urban areas. Conclusions: Epidemiological data on stalking collected in an Austrian community closely resemble the data derived from a community-based sample in a middle-sized Ger- man city. We also inquired about the living environment of the participants (rural or urban), but found no difference between the two. Furthermore, the lifetime prevalence of being a stalking victim is associated with currently impaired psychological well-being as measured by the WHO-5 Well-being Index.

German Study Finds Stalking May Stop, But Victims' Suffering Does Not

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article International NewsFull AccessGerman Study Finds Stalking May Stop, But Victims' Suffering Does NotJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:2 Sep 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.40.17.00400017bLike so many young women, “Astrid” had looked forward with great excitement to her wedding day. But when the day finally arrived, she looked out the window and saw, to her horror, a black hearse parked in front of her house. A former boyfriend, “Otto,” she soon learned, had ordered the hearse to express his displeasure over her having rejected him in favor of another suitor.Stalking is a serious problem for a number of women, and also for some men, in Germany, just as it is people in other countries, a new study reveals. This is apparently the first community study of stalkers to be conducted in Germany.The lead investigator was Harald Dressing, M.D., of the Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany. The results appeared in the August British Journal of Psychiatry.Dressing and his colleagues surveyed some 700 residents of the city of Mannheim to identify individuals who had been stalked. Stalking was defined as multiple episodes of harassment that had to be present more than two weeks, involve more than one form of intrusive behavior, and provoke fear. Dressing and his coworkers asked the subjects who had been stalked to provide details surrounding their experience as well as the psychological impact on them.Some 12 percent of those individuals surveyed reported that they had been stalked at some point in their lives. Eighty-seven percent were women. Some three-fourths had been stalked by someone they knew—say, a prior intimate partner. Eighty-six percent of the stalkers were male.Victims reported that the most frequent motives of the stalkers appeared to have been a desire for a loving relationship, eagerness to resume a former relationship, jealousy, or revenge.Stalkers used various means of harassment, victims revealed. The most frequent types included unwanted phone calls; loitering nearby; sending unwanted letters, e-mails, or faxes; following the victim; approaching the victim through a third party; and standing in front of the victim's door. Less common types of harassment included leaving messages at the victim's door, pursuing the victim by car, destroying property belonging to the victim, invading the victim's home, sending the victim unsolicited goods, and sending the victim offensive materials.Almost a third of stalking victims reported having been physically assaulted by their stalker, and almost a fifth said they had experienced sexual assaults.Victims also reported that they had experienced a number of psychological or somatic symptoms as a result of being stalked—agitation, anxiety, sleep disturbances, nausea, depression, headaches, and even panic attacks. Almost a fourth had visited a health professional to help them cope with these problems.One of the most disturbing findings was that even when some variables connected with psychological health were taken into consideration, victims scored significantly lower on the WHO-5 Well-Being Index than had individuals who had never been stalked. This instrument is a brief scale for measuring positive psychological well-being. It consists of five items assessing positive mood, vitality, and general interest over the past two weeks. The instrument has also proven to be good for depression screening in the general population.These results, Dressing and his coworkers wrote in their study report,“ closely resemble results found in population-based representative samples of the U.S.A., Australia, and England.” However, they added, their study is “the first to show that the lifetime prevalence of being a stalking victim is associated with current impaired psychological well-being.”An abstract “Lifetime Prevalence and Impact of Stalking in a European Population” is posted at<http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/187/2/168>.▪ Br J Psychiatry 2005 187 168 ISSUES NewArchived