Long-Term Recovery from Intimate Partner Violence: Recovery and Hope

Recovery is a preferred outcome for assessing intervention effectiveness in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV), but measurement tools are in nascent form. It is therefore unclear what the recovery potential of survivors may be. A national online survey explored the self-rated recovery progress of Australian women (n = 1116), using visual analog scales (VAS) for recovery, hope, and other demographic variables. Findings show that many women rated themselves as completely recovered (14% of the eligible sample and 22% of the women who had left their partner > 10 years previously). However, most women experienced recovery as an ongoing process of healing (81%) and some women made little recovery progress (5%). Nevertheless, 77% of women who had separated >10 years ago rated their recovery as significant (scores of >70/100). Surprisingly, hope and recovery scores were only moderately correlated. This requires further investigation to determine what impacts on hope in long-term recovery, and how subjective and objective measures of hope and recovery vary in the context of IPV. The VAS was an efficient unidimensional measure for an online survey and is proposed for use in clinical and service contexts requiring subjective measures.