The Complexities of Intimate Partner Violence: Mental Health, Disabilities, and Child Abuse History for White, Indigenous, and Other Visible Minority Canadian Women

Abstract

This research examines how mental health issues associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) relate to women's intersecting identities of race/ethnicity, disability status, and child abuse history. Data ( N = 595) from a Canadian triprovincial study included women who were White ( n = 263, 44.8%), Indigenous ( n = 292, 49.7%), or visible minority ( n = 32, 5.5%). Few demographic differences were found. None of the mental health measures (Symptom Checklist-Short Form [SCL-10], Centre for Epidemiological Studies-Depression [CES-D-10], Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] Checklist) were in the clinical ranges. In a MANCOVA on the mental health scales, with IPV severity, racial group, disability status, and child abuse history as variables, only disability was significantly associated with more mental health symptoms.

#MeToo on the Canadian Prairies: Raising Awareness of Sexual Assaults and Mental Health in Women Abused by Intimate Partners

“…Women with both IPSA and child sexual abuse histories had significantly higher mental distress on the SCL-10 (in the clinical range; congruent with Cole et al, 2005) than women with no CSA or IPSA history or than women with IPSA-only but the effect size was negligible. This contrasts with an analysis of the data for the original study (Tutty et al, 2021) in which mental distress was not in the clinical range when considering intimate partner violence, suggesting the impact of sexual assaults from partners on this more global measure of mental health functioning and psychological distress in the previous week.…”

“…Aside from studies that identify women with mental health difficulties as more vulnerable to IPSA, none of the reviewed studies examined disability and intimate partner sexual assaults. The original studies with this data set also identified the importance of disability as linked to difficult mental health symptomology both at baseline (Tutty et al, 2021) and longitudinally (Tutty et al, 2020).…”

“…Data for the study were collected in seven waves between 2005 and 2009. The primary outcomes from the study have been previously published (Tutty et al, 2020a(Tutty et al, , 2021.…”

“…Data were collected in four major areas: demographics and history of abuse; general functioning and service utilization; health and mental health (Tutty et al, 2021);and mothering (Ateah et al, 2019;Nixon et al, 2017) over four years. The surveys included standardized measures as well as open-and closed-ended questions developed specifically for the study (all administered verbally by trained female research assistants).…”

The Mental Health and Well-Being of Canadian Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Women Abused by Intimate Partners

“…The Healing Journey commenced in 2005, with data collected every 6 months over 3.5 years. To provide a baseline for the subsequent longitudinal data analysis (Tutty et al, 2017), the current descriptive data were from the first two waves (constituting the complete study protocol, broken into two waves because of length). The questionnaires were administered face-to-face, with female interviewers reading the questions and recording answers to ameliorate any problems with literacy.…”