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Help-Seeking Barriers Among Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence Victimization

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Intimate Partner Violence and the LGBT+ Community

Abstract

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals experience intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization at disproportionate rates compared to cisgender and heterosexual individuals. Given the widespread consequences of experiencing IPV victimization, intervention and prevention strategies should identify readily accessible and culturally competent services for this population. SGM individuals who experience IPV victimization face unique individual-, interpersonal-, and systemic-level barriers to accessing informal and formal support services needed to recover from IPV. This chapter reviews IPV victimization prevalence rates among SGM individuals in the context of minority stress and highlights unique forms of IPV victimization affecting this population, namely identity abuse . The literature on help-seeking processes among IPV survivors in general and help-seeking patterns and barriers specifically among SGM individuals who experience IPV victimization in the context of minority stress (e.g., discrimination, internalized stigma, rejection sensitivity, identity concealment) are discussed. How minority stressors at individual, interpersonal, and structural levels act as barriers to help-seeking among SGM individuals experiencing IPV victimization is presented. The chapter concludes with a review of emerging evidence for interventions aimed at reducing help-seeking barriers among SGM individuals who face IPV victimization and a discussion of future directions for research on help-seeking barriers in this population.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, 135 College Street, New Haven, CT, 06510, USA

    Jillian R. Scheer

  2. Department of Psychoéducation, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boul. de l’Université, Pavillon A7, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1, Canada

    Alexa Martin-Storey

  3. Department of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences, University of Groningen, Grote Rozenstraat 38, 9712 TJ, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Laura Baams

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  1. Jillian R. Scheer
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Correspondence to Jillian R. Scheer .

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  1. The Pennsylvania State University, Berks, Reading, PA, USA

    Brenda Russell

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Scheer, J.R., Martin-Storey, A., Baams, L. (2020). Help-Seeking Barriers Among Sexual and Gender Minority Individuals Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence Victimization. In: Russell, B. (eds) Intimate Partner Violence and the LGBT+ Community. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44762-5_8

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