About this Research Topic

Background

In a document dated June 16th 2017, the United States Department of Justice stated that Domestic Violence (DV) has a significant impact not only on those abused, but also on family members, friends, and on the people within the social networks of both the abuser and the victim. In this sense, children who witness DV while growing up can be severely emotionally damaged.

The European Commission (DG Justice) remarked in the Daphne III Program that 1 in 4 women in EU member states have been impacted by DV, and that the impact of DV on victims includes many critical consequences: lack of self-esteem, feeling shame and guilt, difficulties in expressing negative feelings, hopelessness and helplessness, which, in turn, lead to difficulties in using good coping strategies, self-management, and mutual support networks.

In 2015 the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights affirmed that violence against women can be considered as a violation of human rights and dignity. Violence against women exists in each society and it can be related to any social, economic and cultural status and impact at the economic level. It includes physical, sexual, economical, religious and psychological abuse. Recent studies have shown that between 13% and 61% of women (15–49 years old) report to have been physically abused at least once by an intimate partner. Domestic Violence takes place across different age groups, genders, sexual orientations, economic or cultural statuses. However, DV remains largely under-reported due to fear of reprisal by the perpetrator, hope that DV will stop, shame, loss of social prestige due to negative media coverage: 90% of cases of DV continue to be identified as a non-denounced violence.

The aim of this Research Topic is to gather updated scientific and multidisciplinary contributions about issues linked to domestic violence, including intimate partner violence. We encourage contributions from a variety of areas including original qualitative and quantitative articles, reviews, meta-analyses, theories and clinical case studies on biological, psycho-social and cultural correlates, risk and protective factors, and the associated factors related to the etiology, assessment, and treatment of both victims and perpetrators of DV. We hope that this Research Topic can stimulate an informed scientific debate on Domestic Violence, in relation to its psychosocial impact (in and outside home, in school and workplace), to DV prevention and intervention strategies (within the family and in society at large), in addition to specific types of DV, and to controversial issues in this field as well.

Keywords: domestic violence, intimate partner violence, victims, perpetrators, societal attitudes, gender violence, intervention and prevention, relevant research, same sex intimate partner violence, same sex domestic violence

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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