Intimate partner violence
[17] According to a study conducted in 2010, 30% of women globally aged 15 and older have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence.
[20] Women who experience intimate partner violence have a higher risk of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infection, including HIV.
[25] The Danger Assessment-5 screening tool can assess for risk of severe injury or homicide due to intimate partner violence.
A "yes" response to two or more questions suggests a high risk of severe injury or death in women experiencing intimate partner violence.
[29][30] The National Institute of Justice cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for IPV research "because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics.
[33] Research based on the Ambivalent Sexism Theory found that individuals who endorse sexist attitudes show a higher acceptance of myths that justify intimate partner violence compared to those who do not.
Researchers Rollero and Tartaglia found that two dimensions of ambivalent sexism are particularly predictive of violence myth: hostility toward women and benevolence toward men.
[35] A notice from the National Institute of Justice noted that women who were more likely to experience intimate partner violence had some common demographic factors.
A study of women who received AFDC benefits found that domestic violence was associated with a general pattern of reduced stability of employment.
[36] The I³ Theory (pronounced I-cubed) explains intimate partner violence as an interaction of three processes: instigation, impellance, and inhibition.
[4][7] Consequences of physical or sexual intimate terrorism include chronic pain, gastrointestinal and gynecological problems, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and death.
[7][39] This is the most common form of intimate partner violence, particularly in the western world and among young couples, and involves women and men nearly equally.
In the 1970s and 1980s, studies using large, nationally representative samples resulted in findings indicating that women were as violent as men in intimate relationships.
[64] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in the United States, 41% of women and 26% of men experience intimate partner violence within their lifetime.
[73] According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the percentage of victims killed by their spouses or ex-spouses was 77.4% for women and 22.6% for men in 2008 in selected countries across Europe.
Studies done in the United States, Nigeria, and Guatemala all support the idea of men reacting violently towards their partners when their masculinity is threatened by changing gender roles.
[75][76][77] Recent scholarship draws attention to the complexity of interactions between conceptions of masculinity and factors such as colonialism, racism, class and sexual orientation in shaping attitudes toward intimate partner violence around the world.
[78] The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence (IPV) at roughly the same rate as men has been termed "gender symmetry."
[80][84][85][86][87] Such results may be due to a bi-directional or reciprocal pattern of abuse, with one study concluding that 70% of assaults involve mutual acts of violence.
[43] According to Ko Ling Chan in a literature review of IPV, studies generally support the theory of gender symmetry if "no contexts, motives, and consequences are considered".
However, when the review examined who is physically harmed and how seriously, expresses more fear, and experiences subsequent psychological problems, domestic violence primarily affects women.
[89] Sexual violence by intimate partners varies by country, with an estimated 15 million adolescent girls surviving forced sex worldwide.
[citation needed] Due to the high prevalence and devastating consequences of IPV, approaches to decrease and prevent violence from re-occurring is of utmost importance.
Initial police response and arrest is not always enough to protect victims from recurrence of abuse; thus, many states have mandated participation in batterer intervention programs (BIPs) for men who have been charged with assault against an intimate partner.
It represents a psycho-educational approach that was developed by paraprofessionals from information gathered from interviewing battered women in shelters and using principles from feminist and sociological frameworks.
[91] One of the main components used in the Duluth model is the 'power and control wheel', which conceptualizes IPV as one form of abuse to maintain male privilege.
[92][93] This low reduction rate might be explained, at least in part, by the high prevalence of bidirectional violence[61] as well as client-treatment matching versus "one-size-fits-all" approaches.
Developed by domestic violence researcher Amie Zarling and colleagues at Iowa State University, the aim of ACTV is teach abusers "situational awareness"—to recognize and tolerate uncomfortable feelings – so that they can stop themselves from exploding into rage.
[95] Psychological therapies for women probably reduce the resulting depression and anxiety, however it is unclear if these approaches properly address recovery from complex trauma and the need for safety planning.
[20] Universal harm reduction education to patients in reproductive and adolescent healthcare settings has been shown to decrease certain types of IPV.
