Why are 46% of stalking victims being given psychiatric medication?

Dr Jess discusses alarming findings which report that 95% of women who are stalked will be diagnosed as mentally ill, and 46% will be medicated.

We need to talk about the pathologisation of women being stalked.

You know, after 15 years in the job, there are few things left that literally make me want to bang my head on a wall - hmm, or actually, maybe there are increasingly more things that make me want to headbutt a wall. I’ll have a think on that one…

Anyway, telling women who are being stalked that their trauma is a mental disorder and then prescribing them psychiatric medication whilst doing sweet FA about the stalker has to be one of those, ‘where’s the closest wall?’ moments.

I have been writing a lot about stalking recently. I have been working with some police forces on their responses to stalking - and as part of some of that work, I was asked to write about the health impacts of stalking on women.

When I tell you I had to take a step away from my desk when I read this study… yeesh.

This is medical gaslighting at it’s finest.

Traumatised from being stalked?

Of course not! It’s paranoid schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and a touch of delusional disorder! Take these pills and stop calling the police!

A recent study by Short et al. (2023) examined the impact of stalking on the physical and psychological well-being of 105 victims and their experiences in accessing healthcare services.

The results highlighted significant health consequences following experiences of stalking. Prior to the stalking, 86% of respondents reported no health concerns. However, post-stalking, 74% reported developing health issues, with 23% sustaining physical injuries as a direct result of the stalking.

Additionally, while only 30% of participants had any pre-existing ‘mental disorder diagnoses’, this figure increased dramatically to 95% after being stalked.

You read that right - after being stalked 95% of women were diagnosed with mental disorders. Fabulous. That’s not going to prejudice a case at all.

Psychological and Physical Impact of Stalking

Stalking has severe implications for victims’ mental and physical health, with well-documented links to later diagnoses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, panic disorder, and anxiety (Dreßing et al., 2020). Stalking victims are also at greater risk of physical harm, substance misuse, and the development of chronic conditions such as hypertension and cardiac disease (Wei, 2019). Importantly, attempts by victims to disengage from their stalker often lead to further harm, as offenders frequently escalate their behaviour when met with resistance (Quinn-Evans et al., 2021).

Fear and distress among stalking victims are not irrational - approximately half of all stalkers ultimately act on their threats (MacKenzie et al., 2009). Research has shown that stalking behaviours were present in 94% of 358 homicides reviewed (Monckton Smith et al. 2017), reinforcing the link between stalking and fatal violence.

Access to Healthcare Services (Short et al., 2023)

60% of stalking victims accessed healthcare services as a direct result of being stalked. The breakdown of services accessed was as follows:

• 66% consulted their GP

• 38% accessed counselling services or mental health support

• 6% attended A&E

• 7% sought support from health visitors

• 22% accessed victim support or specialist stalking services

• 8% engaged with domestic violence services

In 24% of cases, healthcare professionals referred victims to counselling services.

However, of those who sought medical support, only 33% felt that the professionals they disclosed to understood their experience.

28% of victims believed that their healthcare provider did not recognise the impact stalking had on their lives, and 11% reported feeling dismissed, disbelieved, or that their concerns were not taken seriously.

As noted earlier, one of the most concerning findings was that 46% of stalking victims were prescribed psychiatric medication, despite the fact that they were not mentally ill, but rather, being subjected to endless trauma as a direct result of being stalked.

Of those prescribed medication, 61% reported that it made no difference or made them feel worse, while 6% refused to take the prescribed medication.

The most commonly prescribed medications to women who were being stalked were:

• Sertraline (11%)

• Citalopram (8%)

• Diazepam (5%)

• 10% were prescribed multiple medications for multiple mental disorders at once

This raises serious concerns about the medicalisation of stalking victims and the potential for misdiagnosis.

The health and trauma impact of stalking is significant, yet responses from healthcare, police, and social care professionals often fail to reflect the severity of its effects. The widespread prescription of psychiatric medication to stalking victims, despite many experiencing trauma rather than a mental illness, is particularly concerning.

For professionals working with stalking victims, the priority should be recognising stalking as a serious form of psychological abuse and a criminal behaviour, rather than framing victims’ distress as an individual mental health issue.

The pathologisation of women who are being stalked

Many women who are stalked will exhibit symptoms entirely consistent with trauma, including hypervigilance, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, catastrophic thinking, isolation, withdrawal, and panic episodes (Taylor and Shrive, 2023). However, rather than recognising these as expected responses to an ongoing threat, professionals may mistakenly interpret them as indicators of a primary mental illness. This is leading to inappropriate prescribing of psychiatric medication, rather than addressing the stalking – which has multiple negative implications for a victim – especially in legal contexts.

Many victims experience complete disruption to their lives. Their daily routines may become entirely shaped by efforts to avoid the perpetrator, leading to social withdrawal, difficulty concentrating, emotional numbness, and exhaustion. In extreme cases, victims may feel that their world has become unmanageable, struggling to maintain employment, relationships, or a sense of normality. Victims may even become suicidal or engage in self-harm.

Rather than recognising these as predictable responses to stalking-related trauma, professionals policing and prosecution, social care, and healthcare often view them through a psychiatric lens, misunderstanding or ignoring the source of distress.

Victims may be misdiagnosed with mental health disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, or delusional disorder, particularly when they attempt to explain patterns of harassment that others cannot immediately see (Short et al., 2023; Taylor, 2022).

In some cases, they are prescribed unnecessary psychiatric medication, including antidepressants, sedatives, or even antipsychotics, when their distress stems not from a disorder but from a real ongoing threat to their safety. This process of medicalisation shifts the focus away from addressing the stalking itself, forcing victims to manage their distress in isolation while perpetrators continue unchecked (Taylor, 2022; Taylor and Shrive, 2023).

This systemic failure plays directly into the hands of offenders. When victims are dismissed as paranoid, unstable, or exaggerating, their credibility in legal environments such as police investigations, criminal court or family court, is undermined, reducing the likelihood of effective intervention (Pathe et al., 2004; Taylor, 2022).

Stalkers - particularly ex-intimate partners - are adept at using these narratives to their advantage, painting their victims as ‘irrational’, ‘paranoid’, ‘unstable’, ‘liars’, or ‘overreacting’ to professionals, the courts, and even mutual acquaintances (Pathe et al., 2004). As a result, victims are not only left unprotected, but are actively harmed by a system that labels them as mentally ill rather than as individuals experiencing prolonged stalking and violence (Taylor, 2022).

The consequences of this misidentification are severe. It delays or prevents intervention, leaving victims trapped in a cycle of distress while allowing perpetrators to continue. It reinforces the power dynamic between stalker and victim, as the very systems designed to protect become complicit in minimising the abuse and stalking. Worse still, it creates secondary trauma, as victims face systemic disbelief, invalidation, and inappropriate medical treatment that further isolates them (Pathe et al., 2004). ln cases where victims return to their stalker as a means of seeking temporary respite from the intrusions, usually when other measures and systems have failed to protect them, this evokes an unsympathetic or even hostile response from police and social care, who accuse the victim of asking for the abuse, lying about the stalking, or becoming complicit (Pathe et al., 2004, Taylor, 2022).

The risks of pathologising the victim of stalking

- The victim is framed as mentally disordered, which impacts credibility in legal proceedings

- The victim can begin to believe that they have something fundamentally wrong with them

- The victim can begin to blame themselves for being stalked

- Agencies may disbelieve or ignore the victim as they are labelled as having ‘mental health issues’

- The trauma of the stalking is never validated, causing further distress and secondary trauma to the victim

- The victim may experience an escalation of their trauma responses and coping mechanisms due to being pathologised, possibly leading to suicide or self-harm

- Misuse of unnecessary psychiatric medication with side effects and medical implications for a non-existent mental disorder

- Mental disorder diagnoses stay on medical history of the victim for the rest of their lives, impacting employment, insurance, mortgages, and other policies

- The stalker can gaslight the victim, and convince agencies that the victim is delusional, attention-seeking or lying

Taylor (2025)

A fundamental shift is required in our professional responses to stalking.

Trauma responses must be recognised for what they are - a natural reaction to persistent threat, fear, violence, and stalking, not an indication of mental illness.

Effective safeguarding requires prioritising victim protection over medical intervention, ensuring that stalking cases are addressed through disrupting the perpetrator rather than sedating the victim. Without this shift, the criminal justice and healthcare systems will continue to fail women by reinforcing the very structures that allow stalking to persist.

If you would like to discuss my work (writing, training, lectures and consultancy) on stalking, trauma, or pathologisation, please give me an email on Jessica@victimfocus.org.uk

Alternatively, I recognise (as a victim of stalking myself) that this particular article of mine may be useful to those of you struggling with being stalked - so please do feel free to share, save, download and forward this to anyone who needs to see it.