Violence and Consequences

Hi everyone

Welcome from COVID-19 Lockdown.

In the last two weeks, the world has been shocked by deaths which stemmed from VIOLENCE!!

We all saw the video of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis USA. The painful death caused protests all over the world for more than 2 weeks.

Here in Nigeria, we were shocked at the brutal rape and murder of Uwa ,: a young student who was reading in a church in Benin, Nigeria. Regrettably, there are many more of such incidents all over the world. In fact, incidents of rape, incest and domestic violence seem to have increased remarkably in recent times.

In view of this we will be discussing violence. I covet your inputs and comments for a rich discussion. You are Welcome.

Violence according to Wikipedia is the use of physical force to injure, abuse or damage. The World Health Organisation has a more inclusive definition as follows:

The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person or against a group, community which results in or has a liklehood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.

Types of Violence

The World Health Organisation classifies Violence into three broad categories

These are

  1. Self Directed
  2. Collective Violence
  3. Interpersonal Violence
  1. Self Directed Violence

The Center for Disease Control ( CDC) defines self directed violence as anything a person does intentionally that can cause injury to self including death. It generally includes suicides and self abuse. Some mutilate, cut or deliberately injure themselves. These are common in persons with mental ill health.

2. Collective Violence

Collective violence is defined as the instrumental use of violence by people who identify themselves as a group against another group. The essence is to achieve political, economic or social objectives. It includes war, terrorism, gang warfare, ethnic wars ETC.

3. Interpersonal Violence

This is self explanatory and is subdivided into Domestic Violence and Community Violence.

Domestic violence involves the family and intimate partner while community violence involves non relatives.

Interpersonal violencec be further subdivided into Physical, Sexual, Psychological, Emotional or Financial violence. Noteworthy is that interpersonal violence may also be collective in some cases.

Most of our discussion will be centred around Interpersonal Violence. Tomorrow, we will discuss the impact/ consequences of violence.

Thanks for reading.

Published by berthaekeh

Medical Doctor/ Teacher/Author

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