Domestic violence can pave the way to attempted suicide for witnesses!

Zee Media Bureau

Toronto: Violence is a behaviour that should have no pass. Domestic violence and its accompanying abuse does not discriminate. It happens in heterosexual relationships as well as same-sex partnerships.

It should not happen with anybody, but it does. There are people all over the world who suffer because of it everyday. That's the bitter truth.

Domestic violence cases are reported often, but not all. And even if they are, it is mostly after most of the damage is done, that the victims finally find it in themselves to report it. Yet, unfortunate as it is, the problem is often overlooked, excused, or denied.

However, domestic violence can give way to a host of other issues, especially if a child is involved.

Be it the culprits, or the victims, neither considers the amount of damage their child is being subjected to mentally and emotionally.

A new research, however, has revealed the worst, saying that those exposed to chronic parental domestic violence are at a higher risk of having attempted suicide than those without this childhood adversity.

"We had expected that the association between chronic parental domestic violence and later suicide attempts would be explained by childhood sexual or physical abuse, or by mental illness and substance abuse,” said lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson from University of Toronto.

“However, even when we took these factors into account, those exposed to chronic parental domestic violence still had more than twice the odds of having attempted suicide," Fuller-Thomson said.

The study examined a nationally representative sample of 22,559 community-dwelling Canadians, using data from the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health.

Parental domestic violence was defined as "chronic" if it had occurred more than 10 times before the respondent was age 16.

Lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts among adults who had been exposed to chronic parental domestic violence during childhood was 17.3 per cent compared to 2.3 per cent among those without this childhood adversity, the findings showed.

The study was published online in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development.

(With IANS inputs)