Experience and coping strategies of women victims of domestic violence and their professional caregivers: a qualitative study

Introduction: Domestic violence is associated with many negative and potentially long-lasting consequences to women’s mental, physical, and sexual health. This study aimed to identify strategies which had been used by women who had been victims of domestic violence.

Material and methods: This qualitative content analysis was conducted using semi-structured interviews from 1 February 2019 to 1 August 2019 in Tehran. Participants were female victims of domestic violence and their health care providers recruited from Forensic Medicine centers, clinics, hospitals and Welfare Organizations of Tehran.

Results: From these twenty-six interviews we extracted five main themes: emotional introjection, pragmatic actions against violence, sheltering under the supportive umbrella, seeking refuge to avoid violence and remaining in the violent environment.

Conclusions: The experiences of our sample of women and of professionals involved in their care indicated that domestic violence was tolerated by some for financial, cultural and social reasons, and this had severe psychological impacts on the victims. Others from our sample were enabled to act to change their abusive situations but with support from their family or from wider society. The information obtained can potentially be used to inform the design of services and interventions for women who are victims of domestic violence.