Domestic violence and its associated factors among married women of a village development committee of rural Nepal.
BACKGROUND
Violence against women is a global public health problem occurring in multitude of contexts and domestic violence is considered to be the most pervasive one. Poor enforcement of policies, limitation of researches and expertise in this field largely accounts for persistence of this problem and nature of domestic violence and its associated factors are poorly understood.


OBJECTIVES
This research aimed to estimate the magnitude of different forms of domestic violence and identify its associated factors.


METHODS
Community based cross sectional study was conducted among 355 married women of reproductive age group of Kusheshwor, Sindhuli, Nepal. The questionnaire adapted from the World Health Organization Multi-Country Study was used for the face to face interviews. Occurrence of current domestic violence was used as outcome variable in logistic regression. Descriptive and multivariate analysis were performed in order to assess the magnitude of domestic violence and to identify its associated factors respectively.


RESULTS
Self-reported lifetime prevalence of physical violence was 29.6% and past year prevalence was 15.2%, while corresponding figures for sexual violence were 6.8 and 2.3%, and for psychological violence were 31.0 and 18.3%. Lifetime domestic violence was 38.6% while in past 12 months, prevalence was 23.1%. Furthermore, 12.4% of women were experiencing all forms of violence concurrently. Women with controlling husband and having poor mental health were found to be at higher risk of domestic violence.


CONCLUSIONS
Domestic violence is still rampant in our society with several forms of violence occurring together. In a country like Nepal, differentials power in relationship and poor mental health was found to be positively associated with violent episodes. This study highlights the infringement of women rights which can be the cause for serious public health consequences.
['Sapkota|Diksha|D|', 'Bhattarai|Sailesh|S|', 'Baral|Dharanidhar|D|', 'Pokharel|Paras K|PK|']
D005190:Family D005260:Female D006801:Humans D017533:Marital Status D015999:Multivariate Analysis D009390:Nepal D012111:Residence Characteristics D012424:Rural Population D013179:Spouse Abuse
Domestic violence Occurrence Mental health Controlling behavior