Domestic Violence, Self Esteem and Depression among Adolescents

Abstract

Domestic violence is a multi-faceted, social and legal problem facing almost every family for many years and its substantial effect needs urgent attention. On average, 1.7 million adolescents are injured each year and nearly 800 die as a result the Violence (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2001, BLS 2005). Domestic violence broadly includes Physical, Sexual, emotional, verbal, Psychological and economic abuse of a victim or anyone related to him/her according to Uganda domestic Act, NO. 17 2010(Farrell, 2013). According to a survey on domestic violence in rural Uganda by World Health Organization, domestic violence in Uganda is Problem as it’s in many parts of Africa. In Uganda Kashambya Sub county leads in domestic violence with 19%, Kamwezi at 15% and Meziba at 12% according to Monica Muhumusa the Kabale district Probation officer (The New vision, March 16, 2017). Domestic violence affects individuals differently and for adolescents their self-esteem may lower and also at worst scenario it results into depression. Self-esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of his/her own worth. It’s a judgments of oneself as well as an attitude towards self (Smith and Markie, 2007). According to Baruch, (2006) self-esteem is an important aspect of the human Psyche and closely to Physical and Psychological health. Adolescent’s low-self-esteem has been linked with both mental and Physical illness; while high self-esteem has been associated with increased compliance to treatment and lesser health complications according to (Killean, 2003). For a long time continuous studies done by Baruch, (2006) on self-esteem among high school adolescents found that 41% of them who participated in the study reported having low self-esteem which was associated to domestic violence.