Relative Influence of Various Forms of Partner Violence on the Health of Male Victims: Study of a Help Seeking Sample

Researchers argue that partner violence (PV) is a multidimensional and heterogeneous phenomenon that needs to be measured in multiple ways to capture its range, extent, severity, and potential consequences. Several large scale, population-based studies show that about 40% to 50% of PV victims in a 1-year time period are men; this finding is consistent whether the study focuses on physical PV or a combination of several forms of PV. However, no one has investigated how the different forms of PV contribute to male victims’ poor mental health, although research suggests that physical, psychological, and sexual PV contribute unique variance to female victims’ poor health. The current study investigated how 6 forms of PV—physical, sexual, severe psychological, controlling, legal/administrative (LA), and injury—contributed to the poor health of 611 male victims of PV who sought help. We found that the combination of PV contributed significant unique variance to men’s depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, physical health, and poor health symptoms, after controlling for demographic and other traumatic experiences. The common variance among the forms of PV victimization was the strongest contributor to victims’ poor health; the types of PV that contributed the most unique variance were controlling behaviors, LA aggression, sexual aggression, and injury. Discussion focuses on the research and practice implications of these findings