Citation

Howard LM. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00127-023-02431-1

PMID

37020034

Abstract

It is well established that violence and abuse, both in childhood and/or adulthood, have profound impacts on mental and physical health, and that the commonest form--domestic violence and abuse (DVA)--is experienced disproportionately by women, particularly young women. For example, in England and Wales, the 2019 Crime Survey [1], a self-report random household survey, found that 26% of women versus 15% of men reported at least one incident of DVA in adulthood; in the previous year alone, 7.5% women (1.6 million) and 3.8% men (786,000) had experienced DVA. There is also a larger sex difference for severe and repeated abuse--in 75% of DVA-related crimes the victim is female, and between March 2016--March 2018, 74% of victims of domestic homicide in England and Wales were female [2]. Children are also victims of DVA--a recent UK study estimated that 3.3% of children aged < 11 years had witnessed at least one incident of domestic violence or threatening behaviour in their household in the preceding year, as had 2.9% of young people aged 11-17 years [3]. A total of 12% of children aged < 11 years and 18.4% of young people aged 11-17 years had witnessed at least one incident of domestic violence or threatening behaviour in their childhood. Similar data are found in other high-income countries--for example, the US National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence reported that approximately one-sixth of children had witnessed an assault between parental partners, and that 6% had witnessed an assault between parental partners in the past year [4]. Yet until recently, the impact of DVA was not a focus in the training of health professionals and was not included as a priority for mental health research.

As a result, in 2019 a group of cross-disciplinary academics, practitioners, third-sector partners and survivors were funded by UK Research and Innovation to develop a mental health network focused on DVA. The central aim was to develop a better understanding of the relationship between DVA and women's mental health including the mediators and moderators of this relationship, and as a result develop better interventions...

Language: en