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Abstract
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Nelson Mandela said of violence that 'No country, no city, no community is immune. But neither are we powerless against it' [1]. Research over the past decades has provided us with extensive empirical evidence that violence in all forms is indeed prevalent throughout the world - in all age, ethnic and socioeconomic groups and genders [2]. Patterns of violence and the factors that increase the risk of exposure have also become increasingly clear [3, 4]. Based on this knowledge and the mounting evidence of the public health impact of interpersonal violence, prevention strategies have received increasing attention, with widespread efforts to target the root causes [5-8].
This issue of Scandinavian Journal of Public Health focuses on different aspects of violence against youth and women. An article by Koutaniemi and Einiö describes a novel approach to analysing variations in patterns of information-seeking and police reporting for domestic violence in Finland [9], Jónasdóttir et al. report on injuries found in women who sought emergency care in Rejkjavik, Iceland over a 10-year period, 2005-2014 [10] and, in a study from Sweden, Lövestad et al. report that women who had experienced physical violence from a partner were several-fold more likely to have mental health care needs, but that nearly half of these had refrained from seeking help [11]. In addition, two articles highlight the health correlates of violence exposure among young people in Sweden; Petersson et al. [12] report that youth exposed to any type of violence during their lifetime demonstrated poorer self-rated health than their non-exposed peers, and, in a study by Låftman et al. [13], sexual harassment through jokes was found to be highly correlated with psychological complaints among school-aged children. We have also contributed with two articles on violence exposure based on a large survey of women and men in Sweden undertaken in 2012 [14, 15].
The Violence and Health in Sweden study aimed to elucidate the lifetime prevalence of many types of violence in childhood, adolescence and adulthood as well as current health behaviours, mental and physical health conditions and social capital among..
Language: en |