The Different Contexts of Domestic Violence Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Portuguese Overview

The Prevalence, Directionality, and Dyadic Perpetration Types of Intimate Partner Violence in a Community Sample in Portugal: a Gender-Inclusive Inquiry

“…Bearing in mind that criminal statistics point to an overall decrease in IPV (Capinha et al, 2021 ) and there was also a decrease of 4.9% in requests for help to the NGO, specifically regarding IPV, during 2020, one cannot exclude the possibility that less aggressive behavior occurred in this period. If that would be the case, it would be contrary to what was anticipated by some authors (e.g., Campbell, 2020 ), despite the initial increase that was observed on requests for help (Ribeiro et al, 2022 ). Future studies will have the opportunity to clarify whether these findings extend to other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Specific questions about the impact of COVID-19 on intimate relationships could have been asked if it had been possible to anticipate the onset of the pandemic and consequent lockdown measures during data collection. This would be important to contextualize the discrepancy between the decrease of reports to the police during the first lockdown period in Portugal (Capinha et al, 2021 ) versus the increase of requests for help, during those months, to one of the main non-governmental organization (NGO) that support victims nationwide (Ribeiro et al, 2022 ). Such information would allow for a better understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic may have influenced the current findings.…”

Perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence and COVID-19-Related Anxiety During the Second Lockdown in Portugal: The Mediating Role of Anxiety, Depression, and Stress

“…In this study, psychological violence emerged as the most predominant (13%), followed by sexual (1%) and physical violence (0.9%). The increase in requests for help during the pandemic period (comparison between the years 2019 and 2020) was also observed and documented in Portugal by the Association for Victim Support [APAV], one of the main institutions supporting victims of crime in Portugal (Ribeiro et al, 2022 ). Several factors have been associated with an increased risk of IPV, namely the fact that the perpetrator and the victim are forced to live together for long periods of time; the victim's social isolation inevitably leads to less informal control of the perpetrator by the community, interfering with the victim's requests for help; the increase in social stressors, for example, economic problems or job insecurity, which can more easily potentiate the perpetrator's lack of control through the use of violence; or increasing alcohol consumption by the perpetrator (Boxall et al, 2020 ).…”

“…These findings reinforce the importance to focus on the study of the second confinement in Portugal. This focus is even more imperative taking into consideration the high rates of IPV during the first confinement in Portugal (e.g., Pérez et al, 2022;Ribeiro et al, 2022), and the widely-documented link between depression and stress (e.g., Spencer et al, 2019aSpencer et al, , 2019b and stress-enhancing situations (e.g., Glowacz & Schmits, 2020;Glowacz et al, 2022) and the risk of IPV occurrence. For these reasons and since, as far as we know, until now no studies analyzed IPV perpetration during the second confinement, the present study seeks to assess the association between anxiety and fear of COVID-19, IPV perpetration, and psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and stress) in a community sample, during the second lockdown in Portugal.…”

“…Likewise, the impact of the measures implemented to reduce the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, namely lockdown, in increasing the risk for intimate partner violence (IPV) has been demonstrated by several international studies (e.g., Peterman et al, 2020 ; van Gelder et al, 2020 ), with a considerable increase in the number of IPV cases specifically during quarantine periods (e.g., Agüero, 2021 ; Gama et al, 2020 ; Ribeiro et al, 2022 ). Defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2021 ) as involving any behavior that causes physical, psychological or sexual harm to an intimate partner, IPV can affect the physical and emotional well-being of victims (Ellsberg et al, 2008 ).…”