Identifying health correlates of intimate partner violence against pregnant women

Caring for Mothers: A Narrative Review on Interpersonal Violence and Peripartum Mental Health

“…The present narrative review is a comprehensive, critical, and objective analysis of the current knowledge on the important topic of interpersonal violence and perinatal mental health, with a special attention to the more recent literature. The considered studies agree in affirming that women belonging to marginalized communities, women with lower incomes, or women with less education are at greater risk for experiencing intimate partner violence during pregnancy [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Moreover, intimate partner violence represents a potential trigger for the development or worsening of prenatal and/or postpartum depression, and, on the other hand, peripartum depression may heighten the risk for intimate partner violence [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”

“…There is a peculiar, concerning form of physical violence during pregnancy: when the abusive partner hits a woman’s abdomen, there is not only the consequence of hurting the woman but also a great risk of potentially jeopardizing the pregnancy [ 14 ]. Harm to physical health experienced by intimate partner violence survivors includes acute and often visible injuries such as bruises, lacerations, fractures, and sight and hearing damage, in addition to chronic conditions such as hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, asthma exacerbation, and chronic pain syndrome [ 15 ]. Moreover, victims of intimate partner violence during pregnancy are at great risk of being killed by the violent partner.…”

“…It is difficult to ascertain an estimated prevalence of substance or alcohol use and smoking due to stigma associated with self-reporting substance abuse, drinking, and smoking and intimate partner violence. Some studies confirm that interpersonal violence significantly increases these behaviors in pregnant women and suggest a possible combination of chronic stress and substance misuse as a stress-coping mechanism that inevitably predisposes vulnerable women to unhealthy and dangerous behaviors [ 15 ].…”

Adverse health correlates of intimate partner violence against older women: Mining electronic health records

“…Based on the analysis in our previous study [27] and looking at the distributions of the comorbibidity scores (in Fig 2 ), we reason that the over-population of the terms deemed as significant using the standard approach (i.e., testing for OR = 1 at 0.05 level accounting for FDR) is likely because of a detection bias in the health records. The presence of a severe condition like IPV would naturally warrant more exploration during the screening and this can result in more terms to be detected (including those that would otherwise undetected).…”

“…Otherwise, there is less attention and many terms go unnoticed). Thus, if not addressed, this bias could lead to an over-estimation in our co-morbidity scores (log-odds ratios) [27]. To help address this issue, we make an estimate μ of the detection bias on the log odds ratios by looking at the distribution of the co-morbidity scores across all terms (see Fig 2).…”