The Prevalence of Violence against Wives and Relevant Factors in Married Women Admitted to Health and Treatment Clinics in Sabzevar (2007)

Background and Domestic violence against women is considered as one of the general and mental health concerns and covers a variety of injuries incurred on married women. It is the most common form of violence against wives which affects other health priorities including maternal well-being and safety, mental health and family planning. The present research was conducted to study the prevalence of domestic violence and related factors. Methods and Materials: In 2007, this descriptive analytical research was conducted on 396 married women (selected through convenient sampling) who were admitted to the Health Clinics in Sabzevar, Iran. They were given the Index of Spouse Violence to fill out, and the obtained data were analyzed in SPSS using chi-square, Fisher’s test, and Student t-test. The most common forms of violence were mental violence (29.2%), followed by sexual violence (28%), and physical violence (10.8%). It was found that home violence correlated with the couple’s educational level, husband’s addiction, experience of violent behavior in the couple’s childhood, familial relation between the couple, spouse’s physical or nervous disease, place of birth, and the number of children (p<0.05). Domestic violence against women was high in the study, and the most common forms of violence were mental, sexual and physical violence.