Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence

Introduction

Domestic violence includes all acts of violence, from the use of physical force to bullying, harassment or intimidation, which occur within a home and perpetrating at least one family member against another or others. Usually, this type of violence does not occur in isolation, but follows a consistent pattern over time. Its main victims are women, children and / or dependents (Wilson, 2009).

Domestic violence affects all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic categories. The majority of victims are women, but the scope of domestic violence is not limited to women. Adult children and spouses victimize the elderly; children can be physically, psychologically, or sexually abused by parents, relatives, or siblings; gay men and lesbians can perpetrate or be victims of abuse within same-sex relationships; and intimate dating partners can commit assault or rape. The act committed determines the crime, not the relationship between the offender and victim, but the relationship determines if the crime is classified as domestic. The relationship is recognized as domestic if partners are married, unmarried but live together, cohabiting same-sex partners, roommates, and family members. Yet there is no broadly accepted conception of what constitutes a domestic relationship. Because domestic violence generally falls under the jurisdiction of state legislation, the definitions of domestic relationships vary in each state (Gerdes, 2012).

Prevalence

Law enforcement reports indicate that the most frequent act of domestic violence is the battery of women. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and death for women in the United States, and close to two in five women has reported being victims of physical or sexual assault in their lifetimes. In 1999 domestic violence caused 32 percent of the homicides in women (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence [NCADV]). Women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four experience the highest rate of domestic violence—sixteen of every 1,000 women (NCADV). Seventy percent of the teenage and college age women who report being raped say the assault occurred during the course of a date (NCADV). Child abuse accounts for the leading cause of death in children, usually at the hands of one or both parents.

The national prevalence of elder abuse is difficult to ascertain because there are no nationwide tracking systems for this type of abuse. However data is collected from state agencies to estimate the pervasiveness of elder abuse. Approximately one to two million men and women over the age of sixty-five have been injured or mistreated (National Center on Elder Abuse [NCEA]). And at least one in five incidents of elder abuse occurs through financial exploitation, which suggests that there are as many as five million financial exploitation cases annually (NCEA). While abuse within gay and lesbian relationships is still under-researched, researchers are paying more attention to this type of domestic violence. In 2003, for example, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals reported 6,523 incidents of domestic violence, with men constituting 44 percent of the victims (NCVC) (Gerdes, 2012).

Models of Domestic Violence Theories

Yet medical professionals have not elaborated on the personality traits that are affiliated specifically ...