Survivors of gender-based violence and role of official psychiatry in recovery process

Abstract

Consequences of events in the Southern region of the Kyrgyz Republic continue to have impact on communities to the present day. One of the most significant is a number of undiagnosed cases of rapes and other types of gender-based violence (GBV), which happened during the events of 2010. Accurate prevalence rates of GBV cases is still unknown. According to official data of Ministry of Internal Affairs, there were only seven cases of rape, however, according to the crisis center reports, there were 325. Even more alarming, witnesses of the Osh events suggest one out of three women in Osh and Jalal-Abad were either raped or suffered from other types of GBV. Those acts included undressing and unveiling, and cutting women's hair to a shamelessly short length. Cultural stereotypes dictate women hide their ‘shame’, which is why only a small percentage of victims with PTSD symptoms that developed after GBV sought out services from professionals, such as from crisis centers, psychologists and psychiatrists and, of course, police. Author analyzed several cases of women raped during the Osh massacre and suffered from PTSD signs afterwards. The previous painful experience of GBV was uncovered during treatment. The problem is that mental heath care specialists are the last stop for applying for help. This paper analyses several ways of solving the problem, including creating a number of normative documents in collaboration with Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.