A positive mental environment

Is it just me or is plastering these around Glasgow…

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…likely to be counter-productive? It’s another campaign against domestic abuse. Says the Evening Times:

Statements often used by abusive partners will feature on the posters, such as You’re useless’, You’re going nowhere’, You look a state’, You’re a waste of space’ – will go up in Glasgow over the next five days.

The idea is to communicate the persistency of emotional abuse, which can erode self-esteem, confidence and self-worth.

It’s the latest phase in the Domestic Abuse, There’s No Excuse campaign rolled out by the Scottish Executive.


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0 responses to “A positive mental environment”

  1. That’s how they get yhe 1-in-4 figure: they include women who’ve been the victims of rudeness.

    This campaign will succeed in giving two impressions to the public: that there’s so little real abuse going on that these campaigners are having to redefine their remit, and that “abuse” isn’t really all that bad. Great.

  2. Gary

    Ah, stats abuse is a whole new can of rantage. A children’s charity ran a campaign a few years back claiming that 1 in 8 people who walk past this poster were abused as a child. Turns out that their definition of abuse included “not getting enough attention”. Which of course devalues the whole thing.

    This campaign will succeed in giving two impressions to the public:

    Not to mention the impression it gives tourists.

    Do these things actually work, though? Surely the people perpetrating the abuse won’t be put off by posters, and the people suffering from it need more than clever marketing to call the appropriate help? I’m reminded of the posters warning bus passengers not to beat the shit out of the driver: do we honestly expect the kind of people who beat up bus drivers to read a poster and go “shit! I didn’t know that was wrong!”

    I dunno, maybe I’m cynical and maybe these things do work. But I doubt it.

  3. > Do these things actually work, though?

    Depends what you think their intention is. They don’t stop whatever it is they’re publicising, but they succeed in their intention of making the people behind the campaign feel smugly self-righteous.

  4. Gary

    Heh heh heh.