Intimate partner violence and anxiety disorders in pregnancy: the importance of vocational training of the nursing staff in facing them

OBJECTIVE: to identify the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder, trait and state anxiety, and intimate partner violence during pregnancy. METHOD: observational, cross-sectional study developed with 358 pregnant women. The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist - Civilian Version was used, as well as the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and an adapted version of the instrument used in the World Health Organization Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence. RESULTS: after adjusting to the multiple logistic regression model, intimate partner violence, occurred during pregnancy, was associated with the indication of posttraumatic stress disorder. The adjusted multiple linear regression models showed that the victims of violence, in the current pregnancy, had higher symptom scores of trait and state anxiety than non-victims. CONCLUSION: recognizing the intimate partner violence as a clinically relevant and identifiable risk factor for the occurrence of anxiety disorders during pregnancy can be a first step in the prevention thereof.