Women Victims of Stalking and Helping Professions: Recognition and Intervention in the Italian Context

Background: Stalking is a heterogeneous and complex behavioural pattern, whose definition and recognition entail subjective elements, which can influence not only the request of help by the victim but also the recognition and the response of helping professionals. Objective: To study factors influencing perception, recognition and the judgment of appropriateness of interventions in stalking cases by primary helping professionals. Methods: The study was conducted in the frame of a multicentric collaboration of the Daphne Research Program of the European Commission. The Italian preliminary results are reported. 50 general practitioners and 50 police officers completed a survey presenting vignettes portraying stalking of women by men and control situations. Subjects were asked to rate the degree of abnormality and illegality of behaviours, to indicate appropriate referrals and interventions for victims and perpetrators and to answer attitudinal questions on stalking in general. Results: General practitioners gave higher ratings of abnormality of the behaviours portrayed in the stalking vignettes, while judgment of illegality tended to be lower in both groups. General practitioners suggested the opportunity of mental health support in favour of the victims of stalking with higher frequency than police officers, which tended to favour criminal justice interventions. Preferred intervention for the stalker indicated by both groups was again mental health care, followed by police actions, while legal options were less considered. General attitudes considering stalking more a nuisance than a crime did inversely correlate with the judgment of illegality of the behaviours. Professional role but not sex of the respondent did influence ratings. Training received by both groups in dealing with stalking cases and the degree to which law assists in this task were considered not optimal. Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that recognition and response to stalking situations are influenced by professional and personal attitudes, calling for the need of more targeted information, training, and of inter-disciplinary efforts in dealing with this common and serious form of violence.