Domestic violence: A hidden and deeply rooted health issue in India

Abstract

Domestic violence was identified as a major contributor to the global burden of ill health in terms of female morbid-ity leading to psychological trauma and depression, injuries, sexually transmitted diseases, suicide and murder. The study was conducted to find out the prevalence of different types of life time domestic violence against women; fac-tors associated with it and care seeking behavior. An observational cross-sectional study was done among 260 ever married women of 15-49 years of age using a predesigned pretested pro-forma from April 2011 to January 2012 by face to face interview. Data were compiled and analyzed by Epi Info 6 version and SPSS 17 version. The overall prevalence of any form of violence during the life time among the study population was 40.4%. Verbal/psychological violence was the most common form of domestic violence (85.7%) followed by physical (71.4%) and sexual violence (57.1%). Slapping and or beating, kicking, object throwing were the major forms of physical vio-lence; humiliation (91.1%) was the commonest form of psychological violence and most common form of sexual violence was forced sexual intercourse (58.3%). About 21% of the study population faced violence every day. Older age, lower age at marriage, longer duration of marriage, lower education of husband and wife, lower family income, unemployment of the husband and alcohol consumption of husband were associated with occurrence of domestic violence. We have found that the prevalence of domestic violence in this group of population is high. The alarming issue is that approximately one third of women (31.24%) who faced violence in their life-time had never sought any help. The findings indicate to develop appropriate and culturally relevant public health interventions to increase awareness and implement policies regarding violence against women. South East Asia Journal of Public Health 2013; 3(1): 17-23 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/seajph.v3i1.17706