title: Intimate partner violence and women's physical and mental health in the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence: an observational study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This article summarises findings from ten countries from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence against women.
  
  
  METHODS
  Standardised population-based surveys were done between 2000 and 2003. Women aged 15-49 years were interviewed about their experiences of physically and sexually violent acts by a current or former intimate male partner, and about selected symptoms associated with physical and mental health. The women reporting physical violence by a partner were asked about injuries that resulted from this type of violence.
  
  
  RESULTS
  24,097 women completed interviews. Pooled analysis of all sites found significant associations between lifetime experiences of partner violence and self-reported poor health (odds ratio 1.6 [95% CI 1.5-1.8]), and with specific health problems in the previous 4 weeks: difficulty walking (1.6 [1.5-1.8]), difficulty with daily activities (1.6 [1.5-1.8]), pain (1.6 [1.5-1.7]), memory loss (1.8 [1.6-2.0]), dizziness (1.7 [1.6-1.8]), and vaginal discharge (1.8 [1.7-2.0]). For all settings combined, women who reported partner violence at least once in their life reported significantly more emotional distress, suicidal thoughts (2.9 [2.7-3.2]), and suicidal attempts (3.8 [3.3-4.5]), than non-abused women. These significant associations were maintained in almost all of the sites. Between 19% and 55% of women who had ever been physically abused by their partner were ever injured.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In addition to being a breach of human rights, intimate partner violence is associated with serious public-health consequences that should be addressed in national and global health policies and programmes.
authors.affiliation: PATH, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ellsberg
authors.forename: Henrica A F M
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.forename: Lori
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Heise
authors.forename: Charlotte H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Watts
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Garcia-Moreno
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002648:Child; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D014943:Global Health; D006304:Health Status; D045809:Human Rights Abuses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D016017:Odds Ratio; D011159:Population Surveillance; D015995:Prevalence; D012008:Recurrence; D012747:Sexual Partners; D018454:Spouses; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014857:Warfare; D016387:Women's Health; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*