Domestic Violence

Abstract

Domestic abuse, or battering, is a pattern of psychological, economic, and sexual coercion of one partner in a relationship by the other that is punctuated by physical assaults or credible threats of bodily harm.¹ Battering can be seen as a set of learned, controlling behaviors and attitudes of entitlement that are culturally supported and produce a relationship of entrapment (Table 1).³ Many batterers have neither a diagnosable mental health condition nor a criminal history.^4,5 The targets of the abuse are usually a woman and her children, and it may take years for the woman to become disentangled from the . . .