Coping strategies of women survivors of domestic violence residing with an abusive partner after registered complaint with the family counseling center at Alwar, India

Coping is one of the most important and widely studied aspects of domestic violence (DV). Women adopt a wide variety of coping strategies to manage abuse, ranging from individual estrangement to institutional entitlements. The condition of women becomes complex when they seek institutional support while living with an abusive husband and his family under the common hearth. The present study aims to analyze the coping strategy of mediation between informal and formal justice while residing with an abusive husband and his family. Further, the study explores the coping strategy as an outcome of the contextual factor and associated psychological distress. It is a prospective intervention study with a 4-month span building awareness, counseling (individual, couple, and family counseling), and case-specific advice (safety plan, choice-making, and problem-solving). A baseline and endline assessment with SRQ-20 and in-depth interviews were carried out on 299 married women who had registered a complaint with a family counseling center (FCC); Mahila Suraksha Evam Salah Kendra (MSSK) in Alwar district, India. To understand the context and the coping strategy adopted by women, in-depth interviews were carried out. The results show that there is a differential impact of DV, psychological distress, and coping strategy based on contextual factor; women having an informal support system have a better result in coping; and intervention at the formal system resulted in improving coping strategy and simultaneously reducing psychological distress. As the mediation period is interminable and traumatic, the institutional support to women survivors of DV is an important policy alternative for improving survivors' well-being, especially in an unsupportive informal context.