Almost 800 cases of family violence have been reported at a Bahrain support centre since it opened last August, it was revealed yesterday.

The majority of the 782 cases seen by the Batelco Care Centre for Family and Violence Cases, Budaiya, were that of women beaten by their husbands.

It is the Gulf's first centre dedicated to helping victims of family violence, and chairwoman Dr Bana Bu Zabun said the number of domestic violence cases it sees is on the increase.

"According to the statistics of our reported cases, there were 61 cases in January, 79 in February, 179 in March, 51 in April and 109 last month," she told the GDN.

"This is very alarming because this are only the reported ones. Just think of all the cases that are not being reported.

"Most of our cases are Bahraini women who are being very badly treated by their husbands

"The children growing up in such environment will be affected, particularly their psychological balance in the long run."

The centre provides victims with relaxation therapy, hypnotherapy, cognitive therapy, counselling and anger management therapy, besides providing children with play therapy every Thursday from 12.30pm to 2pm.

"We are also giving therapy and counselling sessions to the husbands and teaching them how to control their anger and to respect their wives rather than abuse them," said Dr Bu Zabun.

"We also have a considerable number of women and children from other nationalities.

"Many women, who go back home pacified and lead a normal life, keep in touch with us and we do make it a point to follow up their cases to make sure everything is fine.

"Though we don't provide any financial or legal assistance, we help them to regain their self-esteem and to work out the problems."

Dr Bu Zabun called for more volunteers or professional consultants to take part in the activities of the non-profit centre.

"We have some consultants and psychologists doing volunteer work here, but since it is non-paid, they leave as soon as they get a paid job," she said.

"The centre welcomes volunteers to conduct therapy for the abused victims in English or Arabic.

"We would also like sponsors to come forward and extend a helping hand to this noble cause of ours."

In the 10 months since the setting up of the centre, which is the first of its kind in the region to provide professional psychological help to victims of domestic abuse, about 70 awareness programmes have been carried out.

The centre has also hosted nine television programmes on the subject and plans to do more in future.

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