Peer-reviewed article
SPECTRA: A Conceptual Framework to Bridge Praxis and Remap Relational Violence in India Using a Complex Trauma Lens.
Sen M, Rajvanshi S, Khandelwal S, Ghosh S ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper proposes SPECTRA, a conceptual framework for understanding domestic and familial violence in India through a complex trauma lens. Rather than focusing on individual clinical diagnoses, the framework emphasizes the systemic, continuous nature of violence and discrimination experienced by women and girls within patriarchal family structures. The authors use case studies to illustrate how violence affects survivors across their lifespan, from prenatal stages onward. The work critiques existing psychological approaches as reductive and argues for culturally adapted frameworks that address relational violence as a systemic issue.
Key points
- Domestic violence affects 1 in 3 women worldwide, with women and girls in India experiencing a continuum of violence from prenatal stages until death
- Existing literature on domestic violence in India uses reductive framing and short-term prevalence approaches, missing the broader systemic nature of violence
- Clinical constructs like anxiety, depression, and PTSD cannot fully capture the psychological sequelae of chronic systemic discrimination and violence
- SPECTRA framework shifts emphasis from individually rooted diagnostic frameworks to culturally contextualized continuous trauma frameworks
- The framework critiques the hegemonic psychiatric origins of complex trauma theory and proposes cultural adaptation for the Indian context
Limitations
This is a conceptual framework paper illustrated with case studies, not an empirical evaluation of an intervention or outcome measurement study. It cannot tell us about the effectiveness of any specific intervention or provide quantified evidence of outcomes for affected children or adults.
Abstract
Domestic Violence affects 1 in 3 women worldwide. Empirical evidence from India suggests that women and girls experience a continuum of violence and discrimination from prenatal stages till death in families that largely continue to operate within a dominantly patriarchal framework. However, the literature on domestic violence in India suffers from problems pertaining to reductive and episodic framing, focusing on short-term prevalence, and frames the impact on survivors largely in terms of clinical constructs such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD. This work argues for a broader, thematic framing of domestic and familial violence and contends that the psychological sequelae of this kind of chronic and systemic discrimination and violence cannot be captured using rigid clinical constructs that dominate psychological literature. We propose a conceptual framework, i.e., SPECTRA (Socially and Psychologically Embedded Continuous Trauma in Relational Architecture), which is partially aligned with the propositions of complex trauma. However, we also critique the origin of complex trauma within hegemonic psychiatry and highlight the need for creating a culturally adapted expansion-to shift the emphasis from an individually rooted, diagnostic framework to a culturally contextualized continuous trauma framework. We utilize seven illustrative case studies to define the tenets of the SPECTRA model.