Episode 152: Karen Williams on helping doctors better understand violence against women

October 14, 2021 Children, Divorce and Custody, Domestic Violence, Gender (Justice), Gender-Based Violence, Podcasts, Policy, Prevention, Trauma and Abuse

On this episode of the en(gender)ed podcast, our guest is Dr. Karen WIlliams, a psychiatrist based in Australia, with an interest In PTSD and cPTSD , social justice and public health. Karen is the Founder of Doctors Against Violence Towards Women, a group of 700 plus doctors from across Australia and New Zealand committed to combating domestic abuse against women, in all of its forms.  We speak with Karen today about her work, her organization’s mission, and its advocacy to reform the health care system including lobbying the government to provide better, evidence-based support for the domestic violence sector and coordinating with other advocacy groups in the child welfare, education, and/or legal sectors.

During our conversation, Karen and I referenced the following resources:

  • How Karen came to found Doctors Against Violence Towards Women
  • The gendered difference in how society and the medical industry treats men with trauma versus women with trauma
  • The pathologization of women’s trauma
  • The Dirty John Netflix series
  • The abuser disinformation tactic of “PAS” or responding to victims’ claims of abuse by counterclaiming “Parental Alienation”
  • The lack of regulation of forensic evaluators not just in Australia, but all over the English-speaking world (Listen to our interview with Nancy Erickson for more on this crisis)

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