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Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns

BACKGROUND: In a geopolitically at-risk environment, such as Palestine, gender-based violence (GBV) is still a crucial problem rooted in discriminatory laws and traditional habits exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Moreover, the lack of updated data makes it difficult to grasp t...

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Autores principales: Mahamid, Fayez, Veronese, Guido, Bdier, Dana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8978158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35379291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-022-00444-2
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author Mahamid, Fayez
Veronese, Guido
Bdier, Dana
author_facet Mahamid, Fayez
Veronese, Guido
Bdier, Dana
author_sort Mahamid, Fayez
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In a geopolitically at-risk environment, such as Palestine, gender-based violence (GBV) is still a crucial problem rooted in discriminatory laws and traditional habits exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Moreover, the lack of updated data makes it difficult to grasp the magnitude of the phenomenon entirely; the purpose of the current study was to explore mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns on GBV among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Participants in the study were 30 Mental Health Professionals (MHP) selected using convenience and snowball sampling techniques from among MHP in northern West Bank, Palestine. RESULTS: A thematic content analysis revealed seven main themes of GBV during the pandemic. Palestinian MHP reported that the increased number of GBV cases among women during the COVID-19, quarantine, physical distancing measures, and closure of non-essential services significantly heightened the risks of GBV among Palestinian women. Moreover, Palestinian women involved with or married to older men or married at a very young age were at risk of GBV more than others. Results of qualitative analysis also showed that Israeli occupation and the political violence characterizing the area for decades (including restriction of movement, house demolitions, separation of family members, etc.) have also exacerbated and increased GBV in the occupied Palestinian territories. CONCLUSIONS: Improving intervention skills and supervision services among Palestinian MHP to help women who face GBV is recommended. Moreover, additional research should be conducted to explore the risk and potential factors of GBV, agency, and coping strategies to deal with GBV.
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spelling pubmed-89781582022-04-04 Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns Mahamid, Fayez Veronese, Guido Bdier, Dana Confl Health Research BACKGROUND: In a geopolitically at-risk environment, such as Palestine, gender-based violence (GBV) is still a crucial problem rooted in discriminatory laws and traditional habits exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli military occupation. Moreover, the lack of updated data makes it difficult to grasp the magnitude of the phenomenon entirely; the purpose of the current study was to explore mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns on GBV among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Participants in the study were 30 Mental Health Professionals (MHP) selected using convenience and snowball sampling techniques from among MHP in northern West Bank, Palestine. RESULTS: A thematic content analysis revealed seven main themes of GBV during the pandemic. Palestinian MHP reported that the increased number of GBV cases among women during the COVID-19, quarantine, physical distancing measures, and closure of non-essential services significantly heightened the risks of GBV among Palestinian women. Moreover, Palestinian women involved with or married to older men or married at a very young age were at risk of GBV more than others. Results of qualitative analysis also showed that Israeli occupation and the political violence characterizing the area for decades (including restriction of movement, house demolitions, separation of family members, etc.) have also exacerbated and increased GBV in the occupied Palestinian territories. CONCLUSIONS: Improving intervention skills and supervision services among Palestinian MHP to help women who face GBV is recommended. Moreover, additional research should be conducted to explore the risk and potential factors of GBV, agency, and coping strategies to deal with GBV. BioMed Central 2022-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8978158/ /pubmed/35379291 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-022-00444-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Mahamid, Fayez
Veronese, Guido
Bdier, Dana
Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title_full Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title_fullStr Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title_full_unstemmed Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title_short Gender-based violence experiences among Palestinian women during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
title_sort gender-based violence experiences among palestinian women during the covid-19 pandemic: mental health professionals’ perceptions and concerns
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8978158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35379291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-022-00444-2
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