Children with mothers suffering from domestic violence prone to mental health issues, study says

The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, underscore the need for school programs sensitive to trauma and improved prevention of domestic violence in India.

Researchers from the cVEDA Consortium, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, and international institutes looked at nearly 2,800 teen-mother pairs.

The data was collected from seven centres across urban and rural India, examining mental health disorders among teenagers aged 12-17 years and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse affecting their mothers.

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Mothers experiencing abuse were “significantly associated with adolescent common mental disorders including anxiety and depression,” the authors wrote.

“Depressive disorders specifically were associated with physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, while anxiety disorders were associated only with physical and sexual abuse”.

One in three women in India are estimated to suffer domestic violence, making them more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidality.

This link has been well demonstrated in Western studies, the researchers said.

They added that studies in India show that exposure to domestic violence is related to adverse outcomes at birth — miscarriage, still and pre-mature birth — and emotional, behavioural, and academic difficulties in children.

However, knowledge gaps remain on how mothers experiencing domestic violence can impact the mental health of children, for which cultural aspects of domestic violence — joint families and emotional means — need to be looked at.

The joint family system — a woman living with her husband’s family — can serve as a support, but also enable domestic violence directly or indirectly by exerting influence on the man, the authors explained.

Emotional violence by forcing women to return to their parental homes, physical means of resorting to stones and chemicals to inflict hurt and controlling birth outcomes by withholding contraception until a boy is born, are some other types of domestic violence.

Psychological violence was found to include verbal threats and harassment, and deprivation of resources, possibly more noticed by children, the authors said.

The findings are in line with previous studies that have shown noticeable changes in the behaviour and academic performance of teens witnessing violence in their homes, indicating they are absorbing its effects, they said.

Adolescence is a critical period during which milestones related to one’s thought processes, social conduct and personality are achieved.

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Teenage years could also thus be a period when one is vulnerable to the effects of witnessing their mother suffering domestic violence — this exposure has been studied to set the affected up for a higher chance of chronic diseases and psychological disorders, the team said.