Domestic violence against women A study on their mental health

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: AN OVER VIEW The term violence derives from the Latin word "vis" which means force and refers to the notion of constraint and using physical superiority on the other person (Minayo & Souza, 2003). For a woman, violence is a phenomenon which generally starts at conception and continues till her death. Especially in India, pre-birth selection and female foeticide is a common phenomenon and the preference for a male offspring is widespread. Discrimination of girls/women continues in different ways such as access to adequate food and available medical facilities, extreme burden of household work etc. All these lead to lack of appropriate education, awareness and empowerment among women. Further vulnerability is compounded by early marriages and early child bearing. Thus women often experience violence or abuse in every phase of their life-cycle. Many researchers (Barbara & Ellsberg, 2002; Watts & Zimmerman, 2002) in their research also stated that a woman in her lifetime undergo different forms of violence right from her conception to till death. Violence of any form overshadows her identity and morally degrades her. Though violence against women (VAW) comes in a number of forms, however, the most frequent and targeted form of VAW is domestic violence (DV). This form appears in discrete manner and can take place under diverge situations and involves random acts of violent behaviours that are specifically targeted towards women of different age groups, classes and cultural backgrounds (Felipe & Pirlott, 2006). Domestic Violence is a common pattern of violence that occurs daily at homes across geographical locations. In the year 2005, WHO conducted a worldwide study to determine the prevalence of DV against women. The study found that globally nearly 30% to 60% women experienced domestic abuse. It also showed that among the abused women, 13-61% reported physical violence by their partners (Aygül, Yavan, Sahiner & Kiliç, 2012). Among all the countries studied by WHO (2014), Japan had the lowest rate of violence whereas Peru had the highest rate of PV against women (Garcia-Moreno, Jansen, Ellsberg, Heise, & Watts,