The effects of domestic violence on young people in their relationships

Abstract

Domestic violence has only recently started to be studied deeply m Western countries. The consequences it has left on the victims have now started to emerge. In Malta too, this negative social behaviour has now come out in the open and it is being openly discussed. The aim of this long essay is mainly to explore the difficulties that young people coming from violent homes experience within their relationships with others. The extensive questionnaire put to a sample of respondents suggests only slightly what these young people have been through in their short lives within a violent home. To many of them, help was hardly ever suggested and this has made some of them bitter towards relationships. An action programme is suggested at the end of the study, proposing ways of working with these young people. It includes an empowerment programme for group work intervention, which can be facilitated by social workers working in conjunction with other professionals working with youths in different fields. This could be done by reaching out to these youths from a very young age; namely when they are still at school and offering programmes that will help all young people to seek help while they are still young. This could help them form healthy, non violent relationships when they are older.