The women's mental health research agenda: Violence against women.

The focus of this article is violence against women: scope, impact, community response, clinical treatment, and prevention. Conclusions include the following: (a) Nationally representative data on the scope of violence are lacking. (b) The mental health implications of violence are not currently addressed by the practices of mental health professionals. (c) Discontinuity exists between clinical understanding of the impact of violence and empirical treatment research. (d) Victim services are proceeding in program development without direction from empirical data. (e) Prevention efforts have been isolated from the social context in which violence against women occurs. Nine directions for future research are highlighted that intersect with the stated priorities of the National Institute of Mental Health.