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Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium
BACKGROUND: Policymakers worldwide took measures to limit the spread of the COVID-19-virus. While these sanitary measures were necessary to fight the spread of the virus, several experts warned for a significant impact on mental health and a potential increase in domestic violence. To study the impa...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9463669/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36088357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14135-3 |
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author | Fomenko, Elizaveta De Schrijver, Lotte Vandeviver, Christophe Keygnaert, Ines |
author_facet | Fomenko, Elizaveta De Schrijver, Lotte Vandeviver, Christophe Keygnaert, Ines |
author_sort | Fomenko, Elizaveta |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Policymakers worldwide took measures to limit the spread of the COVID-19-virus. While these sanitary measures were necessary to fight the spread of the virus, several experts warned for a significant impact on mental health and a potential increase in domestic violence. To study the impact of the COVID-19 measures in Belgium, and the factors influencing the occurrence of domestic violence, we set up the study on relationships, stress, and aggression. In this study, we evaluate the prevalence of domestic violence victimization during the COVID-19 lockdown in Belgian children aged zero to seventeen years and the associations of the parents’ financial status, relationships, mental health, and previous victimization to the child’s victimization. METHODS: A stepwise forward binary logistic regression was used to analyse the association between multiple risk factors of domestic violence and victimization of the respondent’s child. The respondent being an assailant, the respondent’s age, and the age of the children in the household were added as moderators. RESULTS: In this model an association with domestic child abuse was found for the age of the respondent, the household’s size, the presence of children between zero and five years in the household, the perceived stress level of the respondent, and victimization of the respondent during the first wave of the sanitary measures, as well as victimization before the COVID-19 pandemic. None of the interacting effects were found to be significant. CONCLUSION: It is advisable to make extra efforts to improve well-being when maintaining sanitary measures by providing appropriate assistance and helping households struggling with increased or acute stress to install positive coping strategies - especially in larger households with children between six and 17 years. Besides, our findings draw attention to the clustering of risk of child and adult violence exposure in lockdown situations as well as to the potential cumulative impact of exposure to violence across the lifespan and across generations. It is key to invest in training healthcare workers and staff at schools to screen for and assess risks of domestic violence development and ongoing or past occurrence in order to detect, refer and follow-up on families at risk. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9463669 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94636692022-09-10 Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium Fomenko, Elizaveta De Schrijver, Lotte Vandeviver, Christophe Keygnaert, Ines BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Policymakers worldwide took measures to limit the spread of the COVID-19-virus. While these sanitary measures were necessary to fight the spread of the virus, several experts warned for a significant impact on mental health and a potential increase in domestic violence. To study the impact of the COVID-19 measures in Belgium, and the factors influencing the occurrence of domestic violence, we set up the study on relationships, stress, and aggression. In this study, we evaluate the prevalence of domestic violence victimization during the COVID-19 lockdown in Belgian children aged zero to seventeen years and the associations of the parents’ financial status, relationships, mental health, and previous victimization to the child’s victimization. METHODS: A stepwise forward binary logistic regression was used to analyse the association between multiple risk factors of domestic violence and victimization of the respondent’s child. The respondent being an assailant, the respondent’s age, and the age of the children in the household were added as moderators. RESULTS: In this model an association with domestic child abuse was found for the age of the respondent, the household’s size, the presence of children between zero and five years in the household, the perceived stress level of the respondent, and victimization of the respondent during the first wave of the sanitary measures, as well as victimization before the COVID-19 pandemic. None of the interacting effects were found to be significant. CONCLUSION: It is advisable to make extra efforts to improve well-being when maintaining sanitary measures by providing appropriate assistance and helping households struggling with increased or acute stress to install positive coping strategies - especially in larger households with children between six and 17 years. Besides, our findings draw attention to the clustering of risk of child and adult violence exposure in lockdown situations as well as to the potential cumulative impact of exposure to violence across the lifespan and across generations. It is key to invest in training healthcare workers and staff at schools to screen for and assess risks of domestic violence development and ongoing or past occurrence in order to detect, refer and follow-up on families at risk. BioMed Central 2022-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9463669/ /pubmed/36088357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14135-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Fomenko, Elizaveta De Schrijver, Lotte Vandeviver, Christophe Keygnaert, Ines Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title | Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title_full | Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title_fullStr | Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title_full_unstemmed | Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title_short | Locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in Belgium |
title_sort | locked up at home: a cross-sectional study into the effects of covid-19 lockdowns on domestic violence in households with children in belgium |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9463669/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36088357 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14135-3 |
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