Social determinants of intimate partner violence among Iranian pregnant women

Intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs in all countries but its prevalence varies greatly across the world and remains unacceptably high with numerous consequences ranging from psychological to maternal disorder, neonatal mortality and morbidity outcomes in pregnant women. The aim of this study was to identify social determinants associated intimate partner violence among pregnant women in Hamadan (Iran).
This cross-sectional study was performed on 1039 pregnant women living in urban and rural areas in Hamadan (Iran, 2015). The data included socio-demographic characteristics in social determinants. The tool was standard questionnaire of violence (IPAQ) for measuring physical, psychological and sexual experiences of violence in the past 12 month.
The results showed that 88% of pregnant women had experiences of violence in the last year. The most experiences of violence were mental violence (87.9%), emotional violence (18.9%) and sexual violence (6.4%). The logistic regression analysis shows that frequency of mother's marriage (OR= 0.18, p=0.003), number of children (OR= 0.52, p=0.041), mother's employment (OR= 0.44, p=0.039), Smoking (OR= 1.91, p=0.019), and mental illness in a spouse (OR= 2.63, p=0.023), unwanted pregnancy (OR= 1.62, p=0.047), and awareness of wife's pregnancy (OR= 12.94, p=0.012) are significantly associated with kind of violence.
The findings confirm that intimate partner violence against pregnant women is widespread and not inevitable. IPV as health problem must be addressed. In order to mothers and the community health promotion, the results of this study suggested the allocation of funding, future research and interventions based on social determinants of intimate partner violence.