Abstract
This chapter argues that women survivors of domestic
violence do not seek out health professionals to disclose abuse or to seek
help to deal with abuse specifically. This is largely because they do not
see them as a valuable solution to dealing with the abuse. It would seem
that some abused women in this study had no notion of how health
professionals can assist in resolving domestic violence concerns. This
could be due to a lack of knowledge of the role of these professionals in
domestic violence or to their actual experiences of inappropriate
responses by them. Nevertheless, health services are critical to assisting
abused women since they often present at these settings, even though
they may not disclose abuse.