Partner abuse leads to health problems
Women abused by their partners suffer higher rates of health complications later in life
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By Richard James. |  |
Tuesday, 13, Oct 2009 12:40
By Richard James.
Women abused by their partners are more likely to suffer health complications compared to women who are never abused, new research has shown.
The study of 3,000 women found many of the problems are not normally associated with violence, such as abdominal pain, chest pain, headaches, acid reflux, urinary tract infections, and menstrual disorders.
"Roughly half of the diagnoses we examined were more common in abused women than in other women," said Amy Bonomi, from Ohio State University.
"Abuse is associated with much more than cuts and bruises."
According to today's study, compared to never-abused women, victims had an almost six-fold increase in clinically identified substance abuse, a more than three-fold increase in receiving a depression diagnosis, a three-fold increase in sexually transmitted diseases and a two-fold increase in lacerations.
The research published in Archives of Internal Medicine examined data from 3,568 randomly selected female patients.
The women were asked whether they had experienced any physical, sexual or psychological abuse from intimate partners, including husbands and boyfriends, within the past year.
Researchers then checked their medical records from the past year to see the diagnoses they had received from doctors in primary, specialty and emergency care settings.
They then compared the diagnoses of the 242 abused women with the remaining women who had never been abused.
"We were able to go to the medical records and find out what abuse victims had been formally diagnosed with in the past year," Ms Bonomi added.
"These women are not just saying they are depressed or have cuts and bruises," she stressed. "They are going to the doctor and having their problems diagnosed."
The authors of the report claim any women who come to the doctor with complaints of depression, substance abuse, sexually transmitted disease, or cuts and bruises should be interviewed about the possibility of abuse.
"Many women may not volunteer that they are in abusive relationships, so health care providers should be suspicious if their female patients have any of these diagnoses and symptoms that occur much more often among abuse victims," Ms Bonomi said.