The term domestic or intimate partner violence has forensic as well as clinical implications. Today, most state laws include criminal penalties for battering a spouse, partner or family member. Mental health professionals and sociologists view intimate violence in a different light. Viewed clinically, IPV is a pattern of coercion or manipulation through the use of various mechanisms in order to exercise power and control within an intimate relationship. Taken apart from its criminal implications, domestic violence describes the perception of one partner towards another and the efforts aimed at maintaining primacy within a romantic context or in the broader social sphere. Domestic homicides in the United States comprise the highest mortality risk for young women. Up to 35 percent of women report being victimized by an intimate, and one in four women will experience a sexual assault within their lifetime (Durose, M. ET. Al. 2005). The United Nations reports that in some nations, the rate of domestic violence may be as high as 70 percent (UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women fact sheet 2013). As currently practiced in the United States, the domestic violence service model is poorly administered and lacks credibility. There are few evidence-based practices established for service provision, primarily due to the lack of credentialed providers, so the emotional trauma inflicted on victims is seldom treated or even acknowledged. Instituting a trauma-informed care model within primary health provision would professionalize the field, provide additional oversight and establish outcome measurements so that progress can be documented and victims can receive appropriate treatment. Utilizing a behavioral health model, appropriate intervention strategies can be standardized to motivate behavior change, and violators can be held indefinitely as long as they pose a clear danger. Most importantly, transitioning domestic violence into the health sector makes a clear statement that this behavior is no longer private and that society has an interest in ameliorating it.
Individual states employ different strategies for addressing domestic violence within the health sphere. Most jurisdictions require that providers attend mandatory courses in family violence for example and medical questionnaires often have a question regarding the patient's safety at home. However, this is where the process usually ends. Physicians, including psychiatrists, have long eschewed the domestic violence question as a matter of individual privacy and they have little time to discuss a problem that has no clear medical intervention. Nurses are in a favored position to assume responsibility for addressing the issue due to their focus on holistic health and their role as advocates and educators. Unfortunately, few nursing schools provide instruction on this subject matter, according to one semester to mental health, which leaves little time for discussion...
