Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Womens Health Issues. 2013 Nov-Dec;23(6):e335-40. doi: 10.1016/j.whi.2013.07.006. Epub 2013 Sep 14.
Despite a growing literature on the consequences of having a romantic partner incarcerated on women's risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, little research considers the broader health profile of the female partners of ever-imprisoned men.
We use data from the Relate Project (n = 332), a unique cross-sectional survey of recently released men and their female partners (2009-2011), to demonstrate that the female partners of recently released men suffer from a variety of health risks and conditions. We also examine the health conditions of females by their own incarceration history.
We find that these women engage in poor health behaviors including smoking, drug use, and excessive alcohol consumption and have high levels of health conditions including asthma, hypertension, anxiety, and depression. The vulnerability of women who had themselves been incarcerated in jails or prisons was especially acute. The number of risky background characteristics such as dropping out of high school (45%) and spending time in foster care or a group home (36%) were staggeringly high for ever-imprisoned women, as were their rates of anxiety (50%), depression (59%), and posttraumatic stress disorder (45%).
Results reveal that the health of the female partners of recently released men is at least as poor as that of their male partners, suggesting a degree of vulnerability that has yet to be considered in the medical or public health literature and a population that desperately needs medical attention with the full rollout of the Affordable Care Act in 2014.
尽管有越来越多的文献研究了有一个被监禁的伴侣对女性感染性传播疾病的风险的影响，但很少有研究关注被监禁男性的女性伴侣的更广泛的健康状况。
我们使用来自 Relate 项目（n=332）的数据，这是一项对最近获释的男性及其女性伴侣（2009-2011 年）的独特横断面调查，以证明最近获释男性的女性伴侣存在各种健康风险和状况。我们还通过女性自身的监禁史来检查女性的健康状况。
我们发现，这些女性存在不良的健康行为，包括吸烟、吸毒和酗酒过量，并且患有多种健康状况，包括哮喘、高血压、焦虑和抑郁。曾经被监禁在监狱或监狱中的女性的脆弱性尤其明显。高危背景特征的数量很高，例如辍学（45%）、在寄养家庭或集体家庭中度过时间（36%），曾经被监禁的女性的焦虑症（50%）、抑郁症（59%）和创伤后应激障碍（45%）的发病率也很高。
研究结果表明，最近获释男性的女性伴侣的健康状况至少和他们的男性伴侣一样差，这表明在医学或公共卫生文献中尚未考虑到一定程度的脆弱性，以及在 2014 年平价医疗法案全面实施时急需医疗关注的人群。
