Intimate partner violence, which affects people of all ages and sexual orientations from all ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, is a major threat to women’s health in the United States. One in four women is likely to be abused by an intimate partner in her lifetime. Intimate partner violence may cause a lifelong prevalence of post-traumatic stress, major depressive disorders, substance abuse, low self-esteem, demoralization, and a myriad of physiological changes to the body and brain that can persist throughout life. The cumulative effects of trauma, or any event that is experienced as a threat to one’s safety or survival, can stimulate defensive responses and disregulated arousal, putting survivors in a constant state of hyper-arousal (fight or flight responses) or hypo-arousal (withdrawal or shut-down). The children of these relationships often suffer insecure, disorganized and abusive attachments which predispose them to enter an adult partnership characterized by abuse. Also, child abuse occurs in 70% of families where intimate partner violence is present.

New York City provides women who leave their abusers with mental health and other services. However, because these services are often overburdened or short term, it can be difficult for a woman to find the kind of long term psychotherapy she needs to sustain distance from her abuser and to deal with enormous problems like inadequate housing, unemployment and childcare. Thus a woman’s ability to transition into independent living is at risk. In a time of serious cutbacks to social services it is even more difficult to find ongoing psychotherapy if you cannot pay.