Dating violence

Dating violence can occur most commonly among adolescence and college years and can range from physical violence, sexual assault, and emotional abuse. During adolescence forming a relationship is a key component in an adolescent’s developmental process and being single is considered an issue among males and females. The idea of being single makes students believe that the girl must be prude or the guy must not have any “game.” Because many adolescents are still changing and growing they are developmentally immature and therefore, easily influenced. The term developmentally immature refers to an adolescent’s inability to make rational decisions due to the fact that they have not reached the full capacity of adult decision making skills. Some relationships that adolescents engage in become abusive and they do not realize this because they lack experience in relationships. Because there are many forms of dating violence, college students are also included in the statistics for dating violence. Many college students are sexually assaulted because of the common place to drink in college.

Dating violence most commonly occurs with females, but studies suggest that males may also be victimized physically and emotionally. However, males injure females more severely and frequently and this may continue and eventually lead to death. Therefore, there is a need for prevention programs to educate the youth about dating violence so that dating violence can be prevented and reduced if has already occurred. In order to make dating violence prevention programs more effective, dating violence must be clearly defined, the frequency must be reviewed to accommodate the many people in need of aid, the different forms of dating violence: physical, sexual and emotional must be studied, how the problem effects the individual and well being of the community must be analyzed, and the risk factors of dating violence and its forms must be explored.

The reason why dating violence must be clearly identified is because the definition of dating violence often excludes some forms of abuse and that in turn affects the frequency of dating violence. For instance, the more forms of dating violence that included in the definition, i.e sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, the higher the frequency is increased. Reasons why prevalence rates vary so significantly have to do with the lack of standardized definitions used to assess dating violence. Some researchers include psychological and emotional abuse in their definition while others are more restrictive and only include physically violent acts. Furthermore, sexual violence is often excluded from definitions. All forms of dating violence must be included because that increases awareness of the problem. Awareness of all forms of dating violence also ensures better prevention programs because victims who suffer from physical abuse may also suffer from sexual abuse and those that undergo emotional abuse encountered sexual abuse. The risk factors of dating violence, of course are the main things prevention programs look for in order to prevent the abuse from happening. If the abuse has already occurred than it is also equally important to look at the impacts of dating violence to help those who have encountered abuse to the road to recovery. Overall, prevention programs are necessary because adolescents who victimize others will continue to victimize in adult hood. Thus, there is a need for these prevention programs, Safe Dates and Expect Respect, to educate the public.