RESUMO
The consequences of violence in the family can be ohserved in varions forms, among which, getting ill, as lhe victims expression ol lhe impossibility of speaking up and reacling againsl lhe violente suffered. Some heart diseases are revealing of lhe organs vulnerahility tu the shock caused by strong emolions, In Maceió, we carried unI a research with seventy tive women, twenty tive of whom had been submitted lo surgery lo revascularize lhe myocard, thirty of them suffered from high blood pressure and twenty belonged lo a group with no such prob)ems. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the stressing life events and lhe quality of the strategies used hy these women lo tope with stress, and lo relate it to the development of ilinesses. Describing the stressing events in their lives, these women denounced several kinds of episodes of violente in lhe domestic environment caused either by their specífic situation in life or by family relationships. Since we understand violence to be a stress generating factor, we present a selection of tbese accountings, as well as the socieconomic context of these families, based on which we analysed the possibilities of developing effeclive strategies to deal wilh such adversities.