OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this paper were (1) to review the literature for information about post-traumatic stress disorder among Chinese women survivors of intimate partner violence; (2) to provide a synthesis of the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder among abused Chinese women; and (3) to identify implications for practice and to suggest directions for research relating to post-traumatic stress disorder among abused Chinese women.
DESIGN: A systematic review of the literature.
DATA SOURCES: Following a systematic search for relevant literature in computerized databases and manual searches of English and Chinese language publications, five papers reporting on four studies conducted in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the United States were included in the review.
REVIEW METHODS: Abstracts meeting the inclusion criteria were reviewed independently by two of the authors and any discrepancies were resolved by discussion. Full papers for selected abstracts were then retrieved and assessed independently by the same reviewers.
RESULTS: The present literature review revealed a paucity of information relating to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms or diagnoses in abused Chinese women. Nevertheless, a link between post-traumatic stress disorder and intimate partner violence was demonstrated by the reviewed papers.
CONCLUSIONS: Caution should be exercised when making comparison of the findings across the four studies because of the inherent methodological differences. Also, as the assessment tools have not been validated for culture-bound interpretation of trauma and symptom manifestation, comparisons of findings for Chinese women to women in Western literature should be undertaken with due consideration. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are discussed.
OBJECTIVE: Explore the relationship between domestic violence on the decision-making power of married women in Myanmar.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional.
SETTING: National, both urban and rural areas of Myanmar.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: Data from the Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey 2015-16 were used in this analysis. In that survey, married women aged between 15 to 49 years were selected for interview using a multistage cluster sampling technique. The dependent variables were domestic violence and the decision-making power of women. Independent variables were age of the respondents, educational level, place of residence, employment status, number of children younger than 5 years of age and wealth index.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Domestic violence and decision-making power of women.
SAMPLE SIZE: 7870 currently married women.
RESULTS: About 50% respondents were 35 to 49 years of age and the mean (SD) age was 35 (8.4) years. Women's place of residence and employment status had a significant impact on decision-making power whereas age group and decision-making power of women had a relationship with domestic violence.
CONCLUSION: Giving women decision making power will be indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development goals. Government and other stakeholders should emphasize this to eliminate violence against women.
LIMITATIONS: Use of secondary data analysis of cross-sectional study design and cross-sectional studies are not suitable design to assess this causality. Secondly the self-reported data on violence may be subject to recall bias.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: None.
METHODS: Purposive random sampling was utilized to recruit participants in the study. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with Malaysian employees (N = 20) from various organizations. The study applied the Grounded Theory Approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1976) to identify the participants' coping strategies in dealing with sexual harassment that occurred at their workplace.
RESULTS: The interviews revealed that both genders were potential victims or witnesses of workplace sexual harassment. Since many Malaysian organizations do not implement any workplace sexual harassment prevention, most of the victims and witnesses tend to use passive self-coping approaches. Typically, policy and guidelines implementation would encourage employees to voice their concerns; however, we discovered that participants' motivation to use active coping strategies depended on organizational role rather than the policy and guidelines implementation. Surprisingly, we also found out that participants from zero policy organizations used active coping strategies when the sexual harassment reached intolerable levels.
CONCLUSION: Organizations play a critical role in helping and supporting both victims and witnesses deal with sexual harassment at the workplace. Organizational climate for psychosocial safety is therefore crucial in the primary and secondary prevention of sexual harassment at work.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic review was conducted on published research studies from four databases which included Scopus, Medline, Sage and Google Scholar using keywords of intimate partner violence OR IPV AND associated factors OR risk factors OR protective factors AND Malaysia. Articles included were either cross-sectional, cohort or case-control studies which were published between the year 2005 till present. Excluded articles were the non-Malaysian origin, irrelevant topics being studied and articles not written in English.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Out of 1983 records identified and screened, five were included for the analysis and interpretation of the data. All of the included studies were of cross-sectional design in which one of the studies was secondary data. IPV prevalence in Malaysia has a wide range between 4.94 and 35.9%. Two studies reported emotional or psychological abuse as the most common form of IPV (13% out of 22%) and (29.8%; CI = [0.27, 0.32]). Significant factors associated with IPV were lower education background, lower socio-economic status, history/ current substance abuse, exposure to prior abuse or violence, violence-condoning attitude; husbands or partners controlling behaviour, substance abuse and involvement in fights and lack of social support.
CONCLUSION: Specific IPV intervention should focus on lower socio-economic groups, high-risk institutionalised groups, the involvement of partners or husband and addressing issues of substance abuse.