Underlying Causes of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Role of Workers in Civil Society Institutions and Care Centers: A Qualitative Case Study

There is an increasing interest in studying family problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its results indicated a high rate of family violence during this pandemic. However, these studies did not examine the psychological reasons behind this family violence in light of the outbreak of COVID-19, using a qualitative research design to deepen the understanding and interpretation of this problem. This study applied the qualitative case study design using a purposeful sampling method, consisting of (4) wives who exposed to family violence during the COVID-19 outbreak. Their ages ranged between 32 to 49 years old. The results of this study found that there are increasing rates of family violence against wives through the COVID-19 outbreak, resulting from the home quarantine stress. The thematic data analysis showed that crises change human thinking, feelings, and behavior; social distancing measures make family members feel isolated, which increases stress. If family members fail to cope effectively, the family's climate turns into a negative one, and the violence among family members increases. The results also showed that satisfying the family members' need for love is necessary to cope with the stresses of crises effectively; as a result, the expression of love between family members can be distorted and become pathological, and the individual expresses his love negatively, such as violence, cruelty, and aggression, and he cannot satisfy his basic need for love and then falls into psychological problems. The negative expression of love weakens the individual's perceived power and hurts others, increasing violence, bullying, divorce, and other family problems. The qualitative data analysis revealed that exposure to violence from the family members affected women's mental health. Thus, these results confirm the importance of the role of the community institutions in drawing public policies to confront family problems and underline the need for wives to plan counseling programs to strengthen their psychological immunity and coping problems to increase their wellbeing and achievement. Thus, there is a necessary need for community institutions' efforts to provide health and psychological services to help women get rid of the negative effects of family violence they were exposed to during the COVID-19 pandemic.