Intimate partner violence, stigma, and health: Elucidating critical connections

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious public health concern that affects approximately one in three women and one in four men in their lifetime; this violence can be physical, sexual, or psychological. A large body of literature has documented the association between IPV and adverse mental and sexual health outcomes; however, very few studies have conceptualized or empirically tested how the experience of IPV-related stigma influences these relationships. The stigma associated with IPV is often overlooked as an important social factor that may have detrimental effects on the mental and sexual health of people who experience IPV. In this talk, I will highlight the Intimate Partner Violence Stigmatization Model (Overstreet & Quinn, 2013) and I will discuss two empirical studies that test this model.