Researching domestic violence in a maternity setting

Domestic violence is widely recognised as an important public health issue that has serious consequences for women's physical and mental wellbeing (British Medical Association 1998: 29–32). In the United Kingdom domestic violence, defined as the physical, emotional or sexual abuse of an adult woman by a male partner, affects around one in three to four women in their lifetime (Dominy and Radford 1996: 6; Mooney 1993: 26; Mirlees-Black 1999: 18). Similar rates of domestic violence have been reported in surveys from Canada (Johnson and Sacco 1995) and the United States (McFarlane et al. 1991).