COVID-19 and intimate partner violence: Women "trapped" in the "shadow pandemic"

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) defines domestic violence as behavioural patterns in a relationship to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Domestic violence compromises the physical, emotional, mental, and economic well-being of victims. In worst-case scenarios, domestic violence can result in the death of its victims. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by increased reports of domestic violence, primarily against women. The World Bank affirmed that before the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence was a global pandemic affecting 1 in 3 women in their lifetime –a staggering statistic. In contrast to the conspicuous nature of most pandemics, the domestic violence pandemic is silent and difficult to detect. Consequently, victims find themselves trapped in a shadow pandemic. The socio-ecological model was proposed to address this problem to achieve a durable and practical resolution. A narrative review method was employed to gather the literature. Articles published from 1995 to 2021 were searched using Google Scholar, PubMed, and Elsevier. Original research papers and articles highlighting the factors influencing the rise of domestic violence during COVID-19 were selected. Supplemental information was retrieved from the websites of international health agencies. After a complete review, 36 sources that met the inclusion criteria were selected. The research identified several significant drivers of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: economic hardship in the setting of social unrest; low socioeconomic status; low educational attainment; mental illness; family dysfunction; and substance abuse. Other added risk factors included the shutdown of usual safe havens to curtail virus spread and the societal tolerance of violence against women.