Impact of Domestic Violence on Mental Health: Socio-Economic and Psychological Factors

Running head: MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
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1MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
Introduction:
The World Health Organization has defined mental health as the status of well-being in
which individual identify their potentiality to cope up with stressful condition of life, work
accurately and contribute to the wider community in an effective manner (who.int, 2018). With
mental health and well-being an individual could live meaningful life in order to achieve their
personal goal. However, there are many factors that affect the ability of individual to maintain
mental health and well-being. Domestic violence has been identified as one of the potential
factors that affects the mental health and well-being of individual to an extent (Johnson, 2016).
Domestic violence is considered as the violence in the domestic settings. Domestic violence may
include violence against parents, children and other family members. It includes sexual, verbal,
physical and mental abuse. Women have been found to be most vulnerable group to domestic
violence. Statistics has indicated that 35% women in the world suffer from domestic violence
(Pallitto et al., 2013). In United States 33% cases of domestic violence has been reported
(ncadv.org, 2018). In Australia the prevalence is 54% (aihw.gov.au, 2018). Thus, it has become
the global issue. Such domestic violence has been found to contribute to the development of
stress, depression and anxiety, thus, leads to the consequence of mental illness (Berns, 2017).
The purpose of the assignment is to identify the factors contributing to the domestic violence and
their effect on mental health. In this regards the paper will provide description of some socio-
economic factors and psychological factors that contribute to the event of domestic violence thus
leads to mental disorder.
Socio-economic factors:
Socio-economic factors have been identified to contribute to the development of
domestic violence in an effective manner. Three major factors that are responsible for the event

2MENTAL HEALTH NURSING
of domestic violence are poverty, education and substance abuse (Kulkarni et al., 2013). The
following paper will provide brief discussion regarding the effect of the three major factors on
domestic violence and mental health.
Impact of income:
Prevalence of domestic violence has been found to be high in low income families. It has
been found that lack of access to household, employment and resources impact negatively on the
individual thus, they could involve in the event of domestic violence. Due to financial crisis, in
some cases women try to work in order to earn money to support the family, however, some
family members restrict them from working, in such cases conflict occurs within the families that
could lead to the incident of domestic violence (Cattaneo & Goodman, 2015). It has been found
that 51% cases of domestic violence is associated with low income (Pallitto et al., 2013). In
Australia, due to lack of employment and income, aboriginal people face domestic violence and
it has been reported that 38% cases of domestic violence has been caused due to unemployment
and poverty in the aboriginal population (aihw.gov.au, 2018). Thus, it can be said that, poverty
contributes effectively as a socio-economic factor to the consequence of domestic violence, thus
affect the mental health and well-being of individual.
Impact of education:
Low literacy rate is another effective contributor to the events of domestic violence.
Uneducated men or women are less productive economically. Thus, they pose an inferior status
in the family. Hence, it becomes easy to exploit such people (Brockhoff, Krieger & Meierrieks,
2015). On the other hand lack of education leads to the consequence of unemployment and low
income, which is responsible most of the cases of domestic violence (Berns, 2017). Furthermore,