Domestic Abuse and Forgiveness among Military Spouses

ABSTRACT

Living with veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with elevated distress in spouses. Moreover, military spouses are at an elevated risk for domestic abuse, which might exacerbate their plight. Forgiveness is posited to have a healing effect for individuals, both in general as well as in the context of marital relations. Yet, the outcomes of forgiveness under conditions of ongoing abuse are not well understood. The current study fills this gap. Military spouses (n = 245) were assessed 30 (T1) and 38 (T2) years after the 1973 Yom-Kippur War. Abuse inflicted upon the spouses, spouses’ forgiveness, spouses’ distress (self-rated health and psychiatric symptomatology) and veterans’ PTSD symptoms were assessed. Domestic abuse was associated with spouses’ distress beyond the effect of the veterans’ PTSD. Furthermore, domestic abuse moderated the associations between forgiveness and distress. Whereas forgiveness predicted reduced distress among spouses who reported a lower frequency of domestic abuse, its effects were non-significant among spouses who reported a higher frequency of domestic abuse. Results imply that the protective effect of forgiveness dissolves in the face of an elevated frequency of ongoing abuse and that promoting forgiveness as a part of psychotherapy for individuals who undergo abuse might be ineffective.

KEYWORDS:

• Combat
• domestic abuse
• forgiveness
• generalized distress
• trauma

Acknowledgment

We thank Mrs. Laura Crompton MSW, who assisted with the proof -reading of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

Yael Lahav., Keith D. Renshaw., & Zahava Solomon declare that they have no conflicts to report.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.