A 23-year-old woman comes to see the general practitioner. She has been married for four years. The GP realizes quickly that he is going to need more than 10 minutes and has one other patient left. He sees this other patient first in another consultation suite and returns in order to give more time for the discussion. The woman is in tears when he returns and describes that she loves her husband but that he is very possessive of her, and has never been happy for her to go anywhere without him.
Her husband works on a computer during the day at a large insurance firm. Despite having trained at college in Child Care she is not currently working, mainly because her husband made it clear when they married that he wanted to be the main breadwinner and did not wish for her to work. He likes to stay in and watch television, and will usually drink a few cans of lager 3 or 4 nights a week. He…
