Domestic violence in a sample of Egyptian female psychiatric patients(pilot study)

Abstract

Domestic violence is one of the most pervasive of all social problems, Domestic violence for women is violence perpetrated within relationships; this violence is much serious than violence perpetrated by a stranger.The hypothesis of this work is that domestic violence is a general health problem and not present particularly in psychiatric patients, the study aims at studying domestic violence in married female psychiatric patients. Sixty Egyptian married females were included, 20 of them had the I.C.D.-10 diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder, 20 neurotic disorders and 20 control group. All groups were clinically and psychometrically assessed using clinical psychiatric sheet of Kasr El-Aini hospital. Those who reported history of domestic violence were subjected to: Zung self rating depression scale, locus of control, Esyenck Personality Questionnaire (E.P.Q) and a specially designed questionnaire to assess intimacy/abuse, and wives’ perception of husbands characters.The results reveal no statistically significant difference between the 3 groups concerning the domestic violence or the degree of abuse. A significant relation was found between domestic violence and history of child abuse. Battered women of patient group were more depressed than control group with no statistical significance, while neurotic patients were significantly more depressed (87%) than bipolar patients (50%) and control group (57.1%)((p < 0.05). Significant higher scores were found in neurotic patients on EPQ neuroticism scale.ConclusionDomestic violence occurring in female psychiatric patients is not higher than normal. In addition, despite abuse, Egyptian wives tend to see their husbands positively.