Polivitimização, coping e abordagem cognitivocomportamental: estudos de caso.

Abstract

Violence, understood as the detrimental act of violating social rules to the extent of harming others, is present in our everyday lives. The subjects are affected by the violence present indirectly in the news which is heard, seen or read in the different means of communication, as well as present as witnesses of situations of external violence, and directly as in an episode in which they become victims. Currently, a number of researches have been carried out with the aim of investigating the impact of varied forms of violence such as negligence, sexual abuse and physical violence. However, a specific study can overestimate the consequences of only one type of violence and underestimate the influence of other forms. In the studies performed since 2005 using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ), whose objective is to map the quantity and co-occurrence of the victimizations, it was observed that polyvictim subjects, i.e., those who suffered four or more forms of violence in the previous year, presented worse levels of mental health, higher chances of being victims again or practicing violence, academic difficulties and higher vulnerability to adversities. Nevertheless, it is observed that some people, faced with difficult moments in their lives as the experience of violence, manage to continue their lives healthily, which can be due to the form of facing or coping used to manage the problem or the emotion coming from the source of stress. Research correlates positively the predominant use of coping focused on the problem to better levels of mental health. The teaching of these strategies can occur through varied ways, such as a cognitive-behavioral approach to psychotherapy. Therefore, this paper has as aim to analyze, based on theories of poly-victimization, coping and cognitive-behavioral approach, two clinic cases. The first one refers to a 31-year-old woman and the second, a child aged 3, both with experience of several episodes of violence. The sessions were divided in initial evaluation and intervention in the first case, and in initial evaluation, intervention and final evaluation in the second. According to the demand, in the psychotherapeutic intervention, Beck s cognitive therapy (1964) was used on the adult patient and analytical behavioral therapy on the juvenile patient. The results indicated better levels of mental health, higher frequency of usage of better adapted strategies, as those focused on the problem, and interruption of the victimization cycle.