Prevalence Of Domestic Violence Among Ever Married Women In Urban Area

Abstract

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Women facing violence is a major global public health problem. The World Health Organization has defined domestic violence as “the range of sexually, psychologically and physically coercive acts used against adult and adolescent women by current or former male intimate partners. A married women may experience violence within the family multiple times/ have overlapping of different types of violence namely physical, sexual, emotional/psychological, controlling behavior socioculturally/ economically by her husband or in-laws. Domestic violence against women though prevalent , the women usually try to hide it and is thus one of the major causes of morbidity for women.. The present study was thus conducted among the ever married women to know the prevalence of domestic violence and to assess the psychiatric morbidity among the women experiencing domestic violence. METHODOLOGY The present cross sectional study was conducted among ever married women who were permanent residents of Belagavi city, from 1st January to 31st December 2017. A sample size of 600 was calculated and obtained by simple random sampling method. Personal interview of eligible participants was conducted by the investigator, using pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire adopted from WHO multi-country study on IPV questionnaire. Data regarding socio demographic variables like age, husband’s age, educational status, occupational details, socio-economic status etc. were collected and screened for psychiatric morbidity using SRQ 20 questionnaire among the participants with domestic violence. Informed consent was taken prior to data collection. Ethical clearance was obtained from institutional ethics committee. RESULTS The overall prevalence of domestic violence was 58.5%. Most of the participants face demotional violence and controlling behavior than physical or sexual violence. Many women chose to maintain silence over the issue and not seek help regarding domestic violence. Almost half of the victims of domestic violence (45.3%) were found to have psychiatric morbidity. Domestic violence was significantly associated with age of the women, husband’s age, educational status of women and husbands, type of family, marital status, parity, socioeconomic status, age at marriage, duration of married life and non pregnant state of the women. CONCLUSION The present cross sectional study reported a higher prevalence of domestic violence among ever married women of reproductive age group residing in urban area of Belagavi which was found to be more among the higher socioeconomic groups as they commonly experienced increased emotional violence than physical violence. Thus half of victims had psychiatric morbidity due to domestic violence.