Surviving Crime & Substance Abuse: Building Pathways to Health & Hope

Article by Kerry Naughton

People who survive crime and violence face a wide range of intense challenges. Crime survivors have to manage and make sense of serious trauma while simultaneously making difficult decisions that involve self-protection and negotiating a complicated criminal justice system. Finding support services, getting help from family and friends, and knowing how to heal is not easy.

Psychological Reaction to Violence

After a violent crime, survivors suddenly see themselves, the person who committed the violence, and the entire world, in a different way. Part of this change in perspective happens subconsciously in the brain as a survival mechanism—the brain actually changes the way it processes information because the brain’s focus on keeping the person alive is heightened. Survivors usually don’t know that these changes are going to happen or why they’re happening. Many people say that they feel “out of control,” “like they’re going crazy,” or have a “rollercoaster of emotions” after experiencing a crime. Survivors often feel confused and overwhelmed by their reactions, and may feel like no one else understands what they’re going through.

This can be incredibly frightening, especially when people don’t have information about why they’re having such strong reactions or how to process these reactions. Without information and assistance, the psychological reactions can continue and may even develop into depression; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; anxiety disorders; sleep disorders; eating disorders; suicidal thoughts or attempts; and alcohol or drug abuse. With information and assistance, survivors can rebuild their lives.

Victimization and Substance Abuse

Some survivors who are not able to find help try to numb the pain of victimization through substance abuse. Research indicates just how strong the correlation between surviving violent crime and substance abuse is:

• At least two-thirds of patients in drug abuse treatment centers say they were physically or sexually abused as children.

• Compared to women who had never been crime victims, survivors of rape with Rape-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder were 13.4 times more likely to have two or more major alcohol problems and 26 times more likely to have two or more serious drug abuse problems.

• Survivors of domestic violence are more likely to receive prescriptions for and become dependent on tranquilizers, sedatives, stimulants, and painkillers and are more likely to abuse alcohol.

• Nearly half of the women seeking treatment for alcohol abuse reported severe violence from their father during their childhood, compared to 13% of women in the general population.

While substance abuse and addiction may temporarily numb the pain, it also increases a person’s risk for further victimization, causing a cycle of repeat violence that, without intervention, becomes increasingly destructive.

Even though there is a strong correlation between substance abuse and victimization, many communities do not have strong collaborations between victim service providers and substance abuse treatment providers. Victim service providers are experts in helping crime survivors rebuild their lives, but may not have expertise in providing addiction treatment. Likewise, substance abuse treatment providers are experts in helping people recover from alcoholism, drug addiction, and other addictive disorders, but may not have expertise in helping people recover from criminal victimization. As a result, many crime survivors are not able to access all of the information and services they need to rebuild their lives.

PSJ’s Response & Commitment to Crime Survivors

During 2010, PSJ plans to create a “Crime Survivors’ Toolkit” that victim service providers and others – in particular, addiction treatment providers – can disseminate to adult survivors of crime. The “tools” will consist of comprehensive, easy-to-understand, culturally competent booklets that address a variety of victimization aspects and issues.

The toolkit will increase survivors’ access to information and the support they need to heal and protect themselves. The toolkit can travel easily and will be widely disseminated, making the resource especially helpful to people in rural Oregon where receiving support is more challenging.

The toolkit will also play an education and development role for service providers that do not specialize in victim support but nevertheless serve that constituency in other ways. The toolkit can similarly help develop the capacity of loved ones and family members to better support the crime survivor. In disseminating the toolkit, we also plan to bring service providers and advocates from a range of backgrounds together to best understand how to use the resources. We hope that in the training and outreach process, we are fostering new relationships and capacity to collaborate. We hope this process will strengthen communities’ overall systems of support.

Information for this article was obtained from the National Institutes of Health; National Center for Victims of Crime; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

We will update you on the toolkit’s development. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our Crime Survivors Program Director Kerry Naughton.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Justice Matters.