Extended Abstract
Violence against women is one of the most important human rights and health problems worldwide that threatens not only the rights, health, welfare and personality of women, but also the foundations of family and society. The most common violence against women is perpetrated by a spouse and is known as spouse abuse against women, which means any intentional mistreatment of a woman by a spouse.
Violence in any way has a huge negative impact on various aspects of women's health, including quality of life, social performance and physical health. One of the symptoms of mental health in women is hope that can be affected and weakened by spouse violence. Spousal violence can lead to lower self-esteem in women and a sense of inability to control their affairs and despair, and a sense of hopelessness or lack of control can have a profound negative impact on their behavior, mood and physiology.
Another negative effect of spouse violence on victims' women is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that occurs by dealing with a life-threatening event and characterized by various psychological symptoms such as nightmares, incident reminders, anxiety symptoms, and reduced threshold of stimulation. The presence of various symptoms, including depression and anxiety in women victims of spouse violence, and the severity of these symptoms may indicate post-traumatic stress disorder in these individuals, which can have severe consequences for the individual, family and community.
Given that violence is a latent social damage and is worrying from the point of view of physical and mental health which is associated with numerous physical, psychological, family and social injuries, therefore, it is very important to examine it in detail. Also, given the increasing prevalence of domestic violence against women by spouses and the lack of research within the country to investigate the impact of spouse violence on some of the mental health variables such as hopelessness and post-traumatic stress disorder in victims, researches need to be done to determine the impact of spousal violence on the psychological states of victim, and based on the results, effective actions should be taken to prevent violence and reduce its psychological effects. In this regard, the present study seeks to answer this question whether there is a difference between hopelessness and post-traumatic stress disorder in women victims of spousal violence compared to normal women?
The research design was causal (post-event) comparative. The statistical population in the sample group was all women victims of spouse violence in Isfahan in the first three month of 1398 who had a history of spouse abuse and had a score higher than 132 from the Qahari and et al Abuse Questionnaire (2005). The control group included all married women in Isfahan in the first three month of 1398 who had no history of spouse abuse and had a score lower than 88 from the Qahari and colleagues Abuse questionnaire (2005).
In this study, available sampling method was used to select the subjects. Thus, after reviewing similar studies, and considering the limitations on sampling in terms of time and place and the adequacy of statistical analysis, 120 individuals (including 60 women victims of spouse violence and 60 normal women) were selected as the sample of research. Sample group in spousal women were selected from the population of women victims of violence according to inclusion and exclusion criteria with a history of abuse; and Sample group in population of women without spousal violence were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria among the women present in the city of Isfahan (parks, recreation centers, etc).
In this study, library method and questionnaire were used for data collection. Questionnaires used in the present study were Spouse Abuse Questionnaire (Qahari, Atef Vahid & Yousefi, 2005), Beck Hopelessness Scale (Beck, Wiseman, Lester and et al, 1974) and Mississippi Post-Traumatic Stress Scale (Keane, Kolb, Kaloupek & ‌ e, 1988).
Finally, the data obtained from this study according to the hypotheses investigated, were analyzed using SPSS-24 software in two parts: descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential (multivariate analysis of variance and T-test of two independent groups).
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare the mean scores of the components of hopelessness in the two groups of women victims of spousal violence and normal women and to determine the presence or absence of significant differences between the two groups and results show that there were significant difference between the scores of the components of "one's feelings for the future", "motivation", "expectations" and "total score of hopelessness" in women with and without victims of spousal violence(P <0.05). Therefore, the mean scores of hopelessness and its components in women victims of spouse violence are higher than those of women without spousal violence ‌.
To compare the mean scores of post-traumatic stress disorder in two groups of women victims of spouse violence and normal women, and to examine the presence or absence of significant differences between the two groups, T-test was used and the results show that there was a significant difference between the scores of PTSD in two groups of women victims of domestic violence and normal women (P <0.05). In other words, the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder in the first group, women victims of spouse violence, is higher than in the second group, normal women.
In general, victims of domestic violence suffer from many psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, social dysfunction, physical symptoms, etc., which in turn lead to impaired decision-making, fearfulness, and imposing conditions, inability to solve problems, negative feelings about the future, impulsivity, expectation of negative consequences, and hopelessness in general. In addition, women victims of spousal violence appear to have low empowerment and self-efficacy due to their humiliation and lack of confidence, so they lose their motivation to reform the existing situation and, as they always expect negative events and consequences, their vision of the future is very negative.
On the other hand, women victims of spouse violence who experience a wide range of psychopathological symptoms and physical problems such as stress, hopelessness, low self-esteem, low resiliency, and long-term depression and anxiety, show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder more than normal women. Therefore, based on the results of the present study, it is recommended that early identification of women exposed to violence and some training such as life skills training, stress and anxiety management training, self-esteem and self-efficacy training, anger control training, emotion management training and ... is necessary to prevent hopelessness and stress after injury and to control their negative and destructive effects in society.
 
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