Citation

Teotia A. Ann. Indian Psychiatry 2023; 7(1): e87.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Indian Psychiatric Society - Western Zonal Branch or the author(s), Publisher Wolters Kluwer MedKnow)

DOI

10.4103/aip.aip_31_23

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Rape is an act of coercive nonconsensual sex with another being. There is no particular country, place, community, religion, or region, unaffected by this kind of abuse. As per World Health Organization,[1] globally, around 736 million females have experienced sexual violence at least once in their lives. Furthermore, females have been found to be more at risk of interpersonal trauma where the perpetrator is a known person. The global burden of rape, when explored in both genders, it is found to be decreased against Men but increased in Women, especially in the least developed countries. As per the records of the National Crime Records Bureau,[2] in India, there are 31,677 reported cases of Rape in 2021, while 28046 cases are registered in 2020, respectively. On an average, in 2021, 86 cases of sexual assaults are reported on an everyday basis.

Whether the victim is a male or female, Rape brings a shock reaction to the body and mind of the person, which collapses his or her entire system. As the mind captures the information of an attack, it activates the sympathetic nervous system for fight, flight, or freeze response. Simultaneously there starts a surge of neurotransmitters to prepare the body and mind to bear the shock. This emotional brain activation changes the biochemistry of the entire body. Every cell of the body encounters that resultant chemical flush. This is the moment when the body is functioning on emergency mode. The activation of the sympathetic nervous system in response to an identifiable stressor is a coping strategy of our body and mind because of the demand made on the entire system due to the presence of the threat in the environment. When the intensity of this experience is so high and so long-lasting, it leads to wear and tear in the body as well. Because the experience is full of terror, it is not just stored at the verbal and conscious level but also at the somatic and unconscious levels in the form of various bodily sensations. These sensations stored in the body in the form of bodily memories results in the experience of dissociation and of flashbacks. The heightened sense of terror also results in disruption in the information processing in appropriate neural channels, which keeps the person stuck in the emotional loop, reliving the same trauma again and again ...

Language: en