Only one male participated in last night's panel discussion on the effects of violence on the health of women and families in the Boylston Auditorium.
Dr. Nicolas P. Carballeira, director of the Latino Health Institute, said there are wide discrepancies between the medical treatment giv- "Women are often underdiagnosed and overmedicated," he said. "Women do not get the kind of medical attention that males get." Carballeira then related an episode where females complaining of chest pains were derided as hysterical while men with the same complaint were examined closely for a heart condition. Two other panelists spoke about the vicious cycle of violence which haunts the families of abused women. Anna-Purna K. Duleep '98, a member of Harvard's Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy Group and former co-director of Response, talked about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on her fiance. After years of abusing his wife and kids, the father of Duleep's fiance murdered his mother one morning. Duleep said that her fiance's experiences pent-up energy and anger as a result. Amy S. Bamforth, who works in the Child Witness to Violence Program at Boston Medical Center, provided statistics on the effects of domestic violence upon children. More than 43,000 children in Massachusetts grow up with violence in their homes. By the age of two years and six months, 10 percent of all children have witnessed violence in their homes, according to Bamforth. In addition, 40 percent of all children have also seen a dead body outside the context of a funeral home, according to a Louisiana study cited by Bamforth. The last member of the panel was Dr. Rosalind J. Wright, a pulmonary physician at Beth Israel Deacons Medical Center and a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society's Committee on Violence. A list of "Take Back the Night Week" events can be viewed at http://www.radcliffe.edu/undergrad/takeback. According to Rosenbaum, over 20 campus organizations are working in conjunction with RUS to put on the week's activities. These include the Undergraduate Council, the Institute of Politics, Philips Brooks House Association, University Health Services and various ethnic and counseling organizations.