The Effects of Violence on Physical and Mental Health
• Discuss the physical and emotional impact violence has on victims.
Victimization is a traumatic experience, whether it is from violent crime such as assault or property crime such as fraud, but it is different from other types of trauma due to the criminal nature of the event. How someone reacts to victimization varies widely, and there is no way to predict how someone will, or should, react to a crime. Some people react to minor crimes with high levels of trauma, and some people react to serious victimization with little reaction at all. However, victims share some common responses, such as a sense of violation and self-doubt, as well as significant effects such as physical and mental trauma that might take years to overcome. Victims of violent crimes tend to be affected for longer periods of time compared to victims of other types of crime (Hanson, Sawyer, Begle, & Hubel, 2010). In addition, a cumulative effect occurs because most of the violence witnessed or experienced substantially affects overall mental health (Turner, Binkelhor, & Ormrod, 2006). The effects of victimization include both direct costs (e.g., medical costs) and indirect costs (such as pain and suffering) totaling an estimated $450 billion annually (Wickramasekera, Wright, Elsey, Murray, & Tubeuf, 2015). Violent crimes, including rape and assault, have been estimated to cost $426 billion, while property crime accounts for $24 billion.
This module discusses the impacts of victimization on the victim as well as on society, but it will not discuss the costs of domestic violence or child abuse (those topics are covered in future modules) nor the costs of several types of crimes that have other significant impacts (e.g., forms of white-collar crime and environmental crimes). This first section focuses on the victims themselves in terms of the mental and emotional impacts and ability to function after victimization.