Research finds 1 in 6 men suffers some kind of domestic abuse from their partner

DOMESTIC abuse statistic often show the scale of male on female abuse. But a new research finds that now 1 in every 6 men experience some form of domestic abuse from their female partners.

“The thing about domestic violence is that it is a power relationship,” says Dr. Jeannette Roddy, who is a lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Salford.

“A lot of the literature is about male on female abuse, but when you look at the statistics over the world, whenever you have a more equal society (for instance in the United States or the UK) where we try to promote equality, what you see is a reduction of male on female violence and an increase in female on male violence.”

But Dr Roddy also acknowledges that often domestic abuse is taking place amongst younger people.
“All of the data we have got so far from the government figures suggests that particular maybe until the age of 20, the figures are quite high and gradually they decline after the age of 30.”

So what more can we do in order to prevent domestic violence from both genders?

“If we have more programmes of education for young people in schools, and not just showing what domestic violence is, but what a healthy relationship is” Dr Roddy continues, that should make children get a better understanding of the reasons behind domestic abuse and how to prevent is from happening.

“If people can start to understand the difference between those things and experience good healthy relationships with their peer groups, I think that would be really helpful.”

“Generally I think that over the last 10 to 15 years we’ve tended to treat domestic violence through legislation, so now there are criminal acts, in which people can be brought to court over, but I think there is more we can do culturally to make it ok to say ‘You know, I’m having problems in my relationship’, rather than pretending that everything is well.”