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Intimate partner abuse, mostly cited for impacting mental health, causes significant physical health conditions, which when identified, can provide a valuable advantage to assisting victims in obtaining a return to health with the right approach to healing.

Unfortunately, coercive control in an intimate relationship is too often not seen by the recipient or those with whom they might come in contact, who could be in a position to help, such as a friend, family member, psychotherapist, or primary care professional.

Educating ourselves about the physical health conditions of intimate partner abuse can provide additional insight into an important aspect of what needs attending to for full recovery.

Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA)

In the general public, it took quite a while for the detrimental effects of IPA and coercive control in an intimate relationship to begin to be seen, but still not recognized, as more pervasive than physical abuse and more injurious to one’s mental health.

IPA is identified as a pattern of behavior in an intimate relationship to achieve power and control over the partner. The abuse can be verbal, physical, sexual, emotional, financial, or psychological—or threats thereof.

The behaviors are intended to intimidate, scare, manipulate, terrorize, humiliate, blame, and cause a traumatic impact. Anyone can be at risk for IPA regardless of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, education, and socioeconomic status. In other words, anyone can be targeted by an abusive partner.

Although this public awareness is in process, identifying the impact on physical health further underscores how IPA needs to be recognized and taken seriously.

IPA and Physical Health

An important study in 2000 identified that women facing psychological abuse—without physical abuse—are twice as likely to identify physical health issues as women who are not abused. (Coker et al. 2000). Among the physical conditions that women suffer included arthritis, chronic pelvic pain, stomach ulcers, spastic colon, chronic pain migraines and other frequent headaches, stammering, and sexually transmitted infections—all of which make living more unbearable.

In 2001, another study showed that patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia had a significantly greater prevalence of emotional and physical abuse from long-term victimization with an intimate partner as one of the identified perpetrators (Van Houdenhove, et al. 2001).

Given the lack of attention to the physical health consequences of IPA, a 2021 study conducts a systemic review of research from 2012-2019 that examines the long-term effects of IPA on physical health (Stubbs, et al. 2021). Their results show,

Negative effects on physical health outcomes for women, including worsening the symptoms of menopause and increasing the risk of developing diabetes, contracting sexually transmitted infections, engaging in risk-taking behaviors, including the abuse of drugs and alcohol, and developing chronic diseases and pain…significant effects on human immunodeficiency virus outcomes.

Their conclusion for women is that those who have experienced violence and abuse have a significantly increased risk of poor health in a variety of areas and require specialized and tailored primary care.

Conclusion

Physical health decline caused by IPA is well documented and anyone with an abusive intimate partner, or who has been with an abusive partner, is at risk of developing harmful physical health problems. When you couple these physical health conditions with the traumatic effects on mental health, IPA creates a serious detrimental impact on the targeted person.

In recovery from IPA, attending to both mental and physical health symptoms is critical to the life of the survivor.

Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE.