According to a new study women who are abused may be at risk of other conditions not usually associated with abuse. It was noted that women who have been abused by their partners in the past year are more likely to be diagnosed with illnesses which range from depression, chest pain and urinary tract infection as compared to those who have never been abused.

 

Dr. Amy E. Bonomi of Ohio State University in Columbus who was the lead author for the study said that those abused women have elevated risks which is half of those that have been diagnosed.

Bonomi and her team noted in the Archives of Medicine that their studies have linked abuse to illness. Much of their research were on women who were severely abused. Most of them were those who seek emergency care after being harmed and those that have filed orders of protection.

 

In order to get a better perspective of the general female population, Bonomi and her team surveyed 3,568 randomly chosen female members of a Group Health Cooperative. Eight percent of the women had experienced some sort of domestic violence in the previous year and 37 percent have suffered domestic violence in their lifetime.

 

Comparing the results to 1686 women who have never been abused to the 242 who reported recent abused showed that those women who reported violence were nearly six times as likely to have been diagnosed with substance use disorder and they were five times of greater risk of family and social problems. The risk for depression was more than 3 times and anxiety was also more than three folds.