Title: Mental Health Disorders Linked To Domestic Violence
Headings: Mental Health Disorders Linked To Domestic Violence
Mental Health Disorders Linked To Domestic Violence
Content: For this new review and analysis, the reseachers pooled data from 41 studies worldwide to estimate the prevalence and odds of men and women with various kinds of mental health disorders being victims of domestic violence. They found, for example, that: Compared to women with no mental health disorders, measured over their adult life, women with depressive disorders were around 2.5 times more likely to have been victims of domestic violence (with a prevalence estimated at 45.8%). For women with anxiety disorders, this figure was over 3.5 times, with a prevalence estimate of 27.6%. And women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the chances of having experienced domestic violence was 7 times more (prevalence estimate 61.0%) than women with no mental health problems. Women with other mental health diagonoses, such as eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and common mental health problems, were also more likely to have experienced domestic violence compared to women with no mental health diagnoses. For men there was a similar pattern. Compared with men with no mental health diagnoses, men with all types of mental disorders were also more likely to have been victims of domestic violence, except that prevalence estimates were much lower than for women, suggesting it is much less common for men to be at the receiving end of repeated severe domestic abuse than women. Senior author Louise Howard, a professor at King’s Institute of Psychiatry, says in a statement that the study finds both men and women with mental health problems are also the ones at increased risk for domestic abuse, meaning that: “The evidence suggests that there are two things happening: