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Television Violence Against Women On The Upswing

December 13th, 2009 by Nancy Brown, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, News
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I guess the theme this week is “when things go wrong.” It seems like just when I think we are getting a grip on public health issues like smoking and violence against women, something appears to shake up my naive belief that we are making progress.

Last month the Parents Television Council (PTC) reported that incidents of violence against women on mainstream U.S. TV has increased by 1.2 times in the past five years with the depiction of teen girls as victims being four times as high as it was five years ago. This particular type of violence seems to be increasing at a higher rate than just regular violence, which makes it worse.

Singled out as the worst offender was Fox which the PTC said allows violence against women to be trivialized through punch lines in comedies like “Family Guy” and “American Dad.” Faring the best was ABC (that is, until the AMA Award show last week) which apparently was the only network not showing a dramatic increase in the number of stories that included beating, violent threats, shooting, rape, stabbing and torture. Read more »

This post, Television Violence Against Women On The Upswing, was originally published on Healthine.com by Nancy Brown, Ph.D..

Domestic Violence: More Common Than You Think

November 17th, 2009 by Emergiblog in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Browsing through my October ENA Connection the other day, I noticed the theme was “Government and Advocacy”. Came across an article on domestic violence. It’s a short article, written by Carrie Norman, RN, CEN, member of the Government Affairs Committee. The quotes below are taken from Carrie’s article.

“The CDC estimates that 37 percent of women who sought emergency department care were victims of domestic violence.”

What? 37 out of every 100 women I have triaged?

Seriously?

“Domestic violence victims are more likely to seek treatment for chronic and psychological conditions.”

Okay. But no way have I been taking care of victims of domestic abuse – I mean, hello, wouldn’t it be obvious? The hovering, overbearing abuser who answers all the questions for the patient? The bruises that aren’t explained by the story? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*