A beaten woman’s bruises are often much uglier and damaging on her emotions than the physical marks they leave on her skin. A team of research from King’s College London, the Institute universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, and the University of Montreal set out to find if victims of domestic violence developed mental disorders. The study, which was published in the journal of Depression and Anxiety, traced women for over a decade and found the ripple effect of abuse left scars deeper than the physical marks their spouses left on them.
“We studied the impact of domestic violence on the risk of mental health problems, particularly depression,” the study’s coauthor Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, a researcher from the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, said in a press release. “We also studied the role of certain factors from the victims’ personal history, such as childhood abuse and economic poverty,” explained Ms. Ouellet-Morin, who is also a professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal.
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