The effects of intimate partner violence on health in young adulthood in the United States

This paper uses data on a national sample of adolescents from the United States followed through the transition into young adulthood to examine the association between intimate partner violence (IPV) and health outcomes, including depressive symptoms, self reported health status, and health care utilization. Researchers have shown an important IPV-health link in a number of settings but have often been limited by using cross-sectional data, convenience samples, and the inability to control for important risk factors and confounders. The findings from this study suggests that these limitations likely inflate the estimated link between IPV and health by as much as 60% but also show that IPV has important health impacts on a number of outcomes. The results also show no differential impact of IPV by gender or previous exposure to child abuse. The health effects of IPV are also typically larger for current exposure than previous exposure, but each exposure type is shown to reduce health.