Impact of domestic violence: a study in communities of Bangkok Metropolitan, Thailand

Introduction: Domestic violence, now a national health concern, has pervasive effects at both individual and social levels. The objective of this study was to survey the prevalence of DV, the characteristics and the impact of the violence among married women living in the slum communities of metropolitan Bangkok, Thailand. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out. A total of 580 married women aged 15 years and above were randomly sampled from seven slum communities in Bangkok. Information on age, education, occupation, income, family size, alcohol use, and experience of DV were collected. Results: The prevalence of DV was 27.2%. Most of the violent episodes were triggered either by factors related to personal characteristic of the couples, such as bad temper (89.9%) and being grumpy (83.5%), or circumstantial factors, such as financial problems (74.7%) and suspicion of adultery (28.5%). Twelve per cent of the abuse episodes were moderate violence, and 34.2% was severe violence. The impacts of victims of violence included mental, family, and social problems. The mental impacts, e.g., anxiety, stress and nervousness were found in 79.1%. Others were sad, unhappy, and depressed at 68.4%. Of those, 50.3% could not control their emotion, got angry easily, and threw things. Other important mental episodes were that they wanted to harm others or revenge at 19% and injured themselves or committed suicide at 17.1%. The last was negative attitude about sex at 12.2%. Conclusion: V is common in slum communities and highly related to socioeconomic status, personality characteristics, and alcohol consumption of the couples