Violence between intimate partners: working with the whole family

Violence between intimate partners (one area of domestic violence) is a common violation of human rights, with long term consequences for the health of survivors and their children.1 2 Health services have lagged behind other agencies in responding appropriately to this problem. Here we review the evidence on identification and management of intimate partner violence in families and summarise primary care guideline recommendations from an international consensus group that we led.3 We searched Medline, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, DARE, and Cochrane for recent (1999-2005) clinical guidelines or recommendations about the management of survivors or perpetrators of intimate partner violence and their children, including guidance on care of the whole family. We referred to reviews in Clinical Evidence and systematically reviewed primary studies of advocacy and psychological interventions for survivors.4 We are the key authors on the systematic reviews and consensus guidelines that this review draws on. Intimate partner violence is defined as any behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm. This includes: Lifetime prevalence of isolated violent acts within relationships, is comparable for men and women, but repeated coercive, sexual, or severe physical violence is perpetrated largely against women by men.6 Although intimate partner violence also occurs in same sex relationships, research evidence on the health consequences of intimate partner violence and the management of survivors is largely confined to women in heterosexual relationships, and they are the focus of this review. We do not know to what extent our conclusions can be extrapolated to male patients and to women in …