Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence

Introduction

Violence against women is a complex phenomenon that may be present in all spheres of life, throughout their life cycle, and can manifest itself in many different ways and circumstances. The phenomenon is expressed mainly through sexual, physical and psychological violence, however does not fall only on the body, it is not always leave visible marks, reflecting the social life of women (Ellsberg, Heise, Pena, Agurto, & Winkvist, 2001).

Among the various situations of violence which women are victims, there is domestic violence, which refers to all forms of violence and dominant behaviors practiced in the family framework. Investigations on health services show annual prevalence of violence against women perpetrated by intimate partners ranging from 4 to 23% and increasing to values ??33-39% when considering the total period of violence in the lives of these women.

In this regard, a study conducted in a unit of primary health care, which evaluated the frequency of cases of violence, the nature, severity and woman's relationship with the offender, it was found that 44.4 % of users reported at least one episode of physical violence in adulthood, and in 34.1% the act of violence came from partners or family members. There was the occurrence of at least one episode of sexual violence in adulthood, 11.5% of women and 7.1% of the cases; the plaintiffs were partners or family members. The author concludes that physical and sexual violence is highly frequent in this service, and the companions and family were the perpetrators and cases are mostly serious and recurrent (Glaser, 2002).

Discussion

Health services are important in detecting the problem, because they have, in theory, coverage and contact with women, being able to recognize and embrace the case before more serious incidents. Thus, the identification of women in situations of violence is of utmost importance. However, the health sector does not always provide a satisfactory answer to the problem, which ends up diluting among other health problems, without taking into account the intention of the act that caused the state of morbidity. This invisibility stems from the fact that services are limited to taking care of the symptoms and not rely on instruments to identify the problem.

It is in this context that studies made ??in health services show that health professionals do not recognize that women are exposed to violence, even when the lesions presented provide evidence of the occurrence of violence. It is worth considering that violence against women, particularly domestic violence, although present in most societies remains an invisible phenomenon, and sometimes socially accepted as normal, or as a customary and expected situation. Thus violence in gender relations is not recognized in health services or accounted for in diagnoses, being characterized as a problem of extreme difficulty to be addressed. Thus, the failure to identify the situation of violence by health professionals helps perpetuate the cycle of violence, reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of health services, as well as consuming financial resources. In this perspective, according to the World Health ...