Women with disabilities at risk for partner abuse
Mon Oct 27, 2008 4:28pm GMT
Link:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKTRE49Q5LJ20081027?sp=true

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study shows that women with a disability
are far more likely to experience a physical assault by a spouse or other
intimate partner than those without a disability.
Intimate partner violence is "an understudied issue in much need of
attention," Dr. Brian Armor, who led the study, told Reuters Health. "We
need to ensure that prevention initiatives designed to reduce intimate
partner violence explicitly include the needs of adults with disabilities
(e.g. ensuring shelters are accessible).

To estimate disability prevalence and differences in intimate partner abuse
among women with and without a disability, Armor and his colleagues from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, analyzed data from the
CDC's 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System -- a large annual
telephone survey of Americans designed to monitor the prevalence of key
health behaviors.

They found that women with a disability were significantly more likely than
women without a disability to report experiencing some from of intimate
partner violence in their lifetime (37.3 percent versus 20.6 percent).

Women with a disability were more likely to report ever being threatened
with violence (28.5 percent vs 15.4 percent) and hit, slapped, pushed,
kicked or physically hurt (30.6 percent vs. 15.7 percent) by an intimate
partner.

Women with a disability were also much more apt to report a history of
unwanted sex by an intimate partner (19.7 percent vs 8.2 percent).

"Future work is needed to get at why" this is so, said Armor, who reported
the findings today at the American Public Health Association's annual
meeting in San Diego.

"Perhaps, women with disabilities are vulnerable to intimate partner
violence because their disability might limit mobility and prevent escape;
shelters might not be available or accessible to women with disabilities;
the disability might adversely affect communication and thus the ability to
alert others or the perpetrator might control or restrict the victim's
ability to alert others to the problem."

Fear is another possibility, Armor said. "That is, a catch-22, stemming from
reliance on the perpetrator for caregiving needs that might go unmet or lead
to some form of undesirable placement if they tell authorities."

He concluded, "Since intimate partner violence is a public help problem, we
need to ensure that prevention strategies for people with disabilities are
widely adopted."

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