Economists measure the cost of health and mental health care and days of productivity lost
What is the cost of sexual assault? The answer depends on whom you ask.
Social and behavioural scientists like me measure the consequences of sexual assault in terms of mental health, physical health and educational outcomes. |BS| We know that post-traumatic stress symptoms may last for years and even decades. Health is compromised indirectly, in ways unknown and unknowable to victims.
Economists measure the cost of health and mental health care and days of productivity lost. Other costs, however, are intangible, harder to quantify. We might call them quality-of-life issues. What might these costs include?
Two doors
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford might put her desire to have two doors in the front of her house – and the couple’s therapy bills that followed that panic-driven request – into the intangible category.
As for me, I have lived in a single-story house for 25 years. I have avoided leaving my home after dark so that I don’t have to re-enter it. (Sexual assault) Errands I don’t complete in daylight stray into the next day. I ask for restaurant seats against the wall, arrange my desk to face the door, and am always aware of the nearest exits. I have loved successive German shepherd dogs who gave me comfort while I slept and security to stroll my neighbourhood. Twenty-five years ago, I descended a staircase and encountered a man wielding a tire iron. He bludgeoned my head and tried to rape me.
I suffered multiple surgeries, endured years of therapy, and still startle more easily than a cat. But far from being damaged, I consider myself thriving, some might say flourishing – despite the costs I incur. I have fixed the problem of who lurks on the first floor by not having a second one. But the problem of entering my house after dark remains. I am wary of who may be there when I return, even with multiple locks, an alarm system and those sweet German shepherds. | Business Standard
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