Gender-based Violence and Depression in Women

Dr. Deborah Western (BA, BSW, PhD) is a social worker with extensive practice experience in the fields of child and family welfare, sexual assault and family violence. She has worked for the peak body for family violence organisations in Victoria, Australia and sits on the Boards of Management of two family violence organisations in Melbourne, Australia. Deb has researched and published in the fields of family violence and violence against women more generally and in 2003 published Inside Out: A Journaling Kit. She is a researcher in the Gender, Leadership and Social Sustainability (GLASS) research unit in the Social Work department at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia and lectures there in undergraduate and postgraduate social work courses. Her research interests include women and mental health, gender, feminist practice, and violence against women.

• Introduction.- An introductory visit to a women’s journaling group.- A conceptual and contextual background for theorising and understanding gender-based violence and depression in women.- Gender-based violence against women and human rights.- Depression in women.- Feminist group work, consciousness-raising and resistance.- Women and journaling.- The Women’s Journaling Group Program (WJGP) model.- An example outline of a Women’s Journaling Group Program.- Practice guidelines for facilitating a Women’s Journaling Group Program.- Postscript.- Index.

From the reviews: "Each focusing on a different yet related aspect of violence against women, the 10 chapters can be read as a whole or individually for their specific emphases. ... The book is important for practitioners who run groups and who work with women. ... useful as a text for graduate courses in group counseling and techniques and in gender and feminist courses And it is very useful for academics who wish to transcend the mentality and constraints of empirically validated treatments for various categories of psychopathology." (Mary Ballou, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 59 (3), January, 2014)