Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong.
Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, 1 Lilybank Gardens, G12 8RZ Glasgow, United Kingdom.
J Interpers Violence. 2022 Jul;37(13-14):NP12111-NP12132. doi: 10.1177/0886260521997451. Epub 2021 Mar 5.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) against pregnant women is a global public health problem. Yet, the trajectory of IPV during pregnancy and its association with health are unclear. This study set out to investigate the trajectory of IPV by categorizing pregnant women according to changes of IPV exposure before, during, and after pregnancy and to examine the predictive factors of these IPV-related categories. During 2016 and 2017, we conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 1,083 pregnant women in Hong Kong. Pregnant women reported their IPV experiences, depression, and demographics in the baseline survey (at about 24-week gestation), and their IPV experiences, mental health outcomes, social support, and perceived father's involvement in the follow-up survey (around 4 weeks postpartum). We categorized pregnant women into four groups, including women with (a) sustaining abusive relationship (AR); (b) relationship with decreased violence over pregnancy (DVR); (c) relationship with stress-related violence (SVR); and (d) nonviolent relationship (NVR). Although we found an overall decline of IPV during pregnancy from 24.6% to 14.3%, there were still a considerable proportion of women reporting as a victim of IPV. We observed that a higher proportion of pregnant women were actually suffering from IPV during pregnancy and after childbirth continuously (22.3% of AR and SVR) than experiencing a termination of IPV due to pregnancy (11.4% of DVR). We also observed that more severe maternal depression, lower levels of father's involvement, and poorer social support were significantly associated with the categories that reflected greater severity of IPV over the course of pregnancy. Our findings reflected that the complexity of IPV related to pregnancy should never be overlooked. Mere reporting of prevalence in an aggregate might not sufficiently explain the problem. Father's involvement and social support are two important factors that might help reduce IPV related to pregnancy and childbirth.
亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）对孕妇来说是一个全球性的公共卫生问题。然而，怀孕期间 IPV 的轨迹及其与健康的关系尚不清楚。本研究旨在通过将孕妇根据怀孕前、中、后的 IPV 暴露情况进行分类，来研究 IPV 的轨迹，并探讨这些与 IPV 相关类别的预测因素。在 2016 年至 2017 年期间，我们在香港进行了一项纵向研究，样本量为 1083 名孕妇。孕妇在基线调查（大约在 24 周妊娠时）中报告了她们的 IPV 经历、抑郁和人口统计学数据，在随访调查（大约在产后 4 周）中报告了她们的 IPV 经历、心理健康结果、社会支持和感知到的父亲参与度。我们将孕妇分为四组，包括：（a）持续遭受虐待关系的妇女；（b）怀孕期间暴力关系减少的妇女；（c）与压力相关的暴力关系的妇女；和（d）非暴力关系的妇女。尽管我们发现怀孕期间的 IPV 总体上从 24.6%下降到 14.3%，但仍有相当一部分妇女报告是 IPV 的受害者。我们观察到，在怀孕期间和分娩后持续遭受 IPV 的孕妇比例较高（AR 和 SVR 的 22.3%），而因怀孕而终止 IPV 的孕妇比例较低（DVR 的 11.4%）。我们还观察到，母亲抑郁程度越严重、父亲参与度越低、社会支持越差，与怀孕期间 IPV 严重程度较高的类别显著相关。我们的研究结果反映了与怀孕有关的 IPV 的复杂性绝不能被忽视。仅以总体报告的流行率可能无法充分解释这个问题。父亲的参与和社会支持是两个可能有助于减少与怀孕和分娩有关的 IPV 的重要因素。
