Titre : Vocational and Financial Losses as Mediators Between Legal Abuse and Mental Health for Family Court-Involved Survivor-Mothers

Résumé : « Purpose: When intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors turn to family court after leaving an abusive partner, their partners often continue to abuse them through the legal system via legal abuse. Despite evidence that legal abuse leads to worsened mental health for family court-involved survivors, little research has examined mediators of the link between these courtroom harms and mental health challenges. This study leverages a concurrent triangulation mixed-methods design to explore these potential relationships.

Methods: With a sample of custody-seeking mothers who survived IPV and endorsed varying levels of legal abuse, we tested quantitative, regression-based mediation models with n = 220 participants and analyzed qualitative data with a subset of n = 157 participants to examine whether economic losses mediate the relation between legal abuse and mental health.

Results: The majority of participants who experienced vocational and financial changes reported worsened economic stability over the court process. Quantitative mediation models demonstrated that vocational changes (but not financial changes) during court mediates the relation between legal abuse and mental health (i.e., post-traumatic stress and depressive symptoms). Qualitative data revealed that many attributed economic consequences of court involvement to legal abuse, the actions of court actors, and the broader court system and described how vocational and financial harms adversely affected their mental health.

Conclusions: We echo calls to transform family courts and pave the way for further research and policy efforts that recognize and respond to IPV and promote the economic stability of survivors in this context. »