Many of the factors surrounding domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and suicide are the same. Victims of abuse and people contemplating committing suicide all suffer from depression, isolation, low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, and a feeling of powerlessness to change the circumstances of their lives. Granted, not every person assaulted will commit suicide, but the statistics show enough of a correlation that we can not focus on one and not the other.

Kilpatrick et al. found that 19% of surveyed rape victims had attempted suicide, compared to only 2.2% of non-victims, and whereas 17% of non-victims seriously contemplated suicide, 37% of rape victims had done so. Resick found similar data where 17% of rape victims seeking treatment reported making a suicide attempt.

The dynamics of domestic and dating violence call for the abuser to try to take all sense of control away from his/her victim. The abuser will do anything and everything to make their partner dependent on him/her. One major way they do this is by isolating the victim. Abusers make it all but impossible for their partners to have any relationships outside of the abusive one. This causes the victim to feel completely alone, they don’t feel they have anyone in their life who can help them, or even to believe them that the abuse is happening.

Many times when a victim does tell someone their reaction is, "well, then why do you stay?" or "what did you do to cause him/her to do this?" This only furthers the victims sense of low self-esteem and isolation. It also puts the responsibility for the abuse on the victim, not the abuser, who is 100% responsible for the abuse.

Domestic and dating violence follow a cycle. The cycle of abuse consists of three stages. The first stage is the tension building stage. In this stage the abuser is on edge, tension is rising. Everything the victim does is wrong. The victim begins to feel as if she/he is walking around on eggshells. She/he is constantly worried about doing something to set off the abuser. The victim is on edge because she knows from experience that sooner or later the abuser is going to blow. In all reality there is nothing the victim can do to stop the explosion from happening, but she does everything she can to try to prevent it.

The next stage is the explosion stage. In this stage the abuser erupts with the tension that had been building up. He lashes out at his partner, either physically, emotionally, sexually, or all three. The abuse is extreme. All of the tension that has been building up pours out of him. He may punch, hit, kick, slap, and/or even rape his partner. If the victim is going to get out of the relationship this is the stage in which it will happen. It is the most important stage for intervention. Her fear of more injury, to herself or her children, may cause her to consider leaving her abuser, but only if she feels she has options. This is where the importance of Missouri Shores comes into play. We allow for a safe space to stay while we help the women explore their options for the future.

The last stage is the honeymoon stage. This stage occurs once the abuser’s anger is gone. After he is done exploding, he often feels remorse, and/or scared that his partner will leave. Because of this he tries to make it up to the victim by doing nice things for her, buying her gifts, taking her places, promising that it will never happen again, and that he will get help. Now everything is back to how it was before the abuse started. The victim is once again experiencing the man she fell in love with at the beginning of the relationship, the man who is loving and caring toward her. This is the stage in which many victims decide to stay in the relationship and try to make it work. The reason behind this is that the victim still loves her partner, and wants to believe what he is saying. She wants to believe that it won’t happen again and that he will get help. The victim does not want the relationship to end, only the abuse.

The victim is caught in a whirlwind of abuse. Just when things seemed to be going well, and she’s truly hopeful that the situation has changed, the tension building stage starts again. The cycle is once more in full swing. After time the cycle shifts also. As time goes on the honeymoon stage gets shorter and shorter, sometimes it even disappears all together and the cycle moves from tension to explosion and back again without any lull in between.

Often when the victim decides to leave her abuser she is in more danger than ever. Abusive men often escalate violence in order to recapture their partners. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics divorced and separated women make up 7% of the population, yet they account for 75% of all battered women and report being battered 14 times as often as women still living with their partners. In many cases the abuser will start to harass the family and friends of his partner as a ploy to get her back. All of this causes the woman to feel completely helpless to get away from her abuser. She feels completely trapped in her situation, and more and more depressed.

In light of all of this it is not surprising that the FBI found that a history of battering accounts for 25% of all suicide attempts by women. In fact it may be the single most important precipitant for attempts among women. According to the CDC, between 35 and 40% of battered women attempt suicide. We may think that these statistics only affect adults in our community, and not the youth, but according to a study done on dating violence, approximately 1 in 10 high school students has experienced physical violence in a dating relationship, and 1/3 of high school and college-aged youths experience violence in an intimate relationship. Also, the majority of rape victims are females aged 15-25 years.