“I Started Avoiding It, What's the Point?”: Intimate Partner Violence Survivors’ Stories of Medical Disenfranchisement

This study explores intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors' experiences seeking healthcare. Interviews reveal that survivors are often treated by healthcare professionals that operate under the biomedical model, which encourages providers to objectively diagnose and treat IPV-related symptoms. Providers utilize the clinical gaze to isolate specific injuries and symptoms of violence without identifying how violence affects overall health and well-being. In doing so, providers may inadvertently establish women's bodies as malfunctioning or defective, leaving survivors to feel unsupported, stigmatized, and disempowered. This paper sheds light on how IPV survivors can become disenfranchised from the healthcare system.