%0 Journal Article
%T Domestic violence detection amid the COVID-19 pandemic: the value of the WHO questionnaire in Emergency Medicine
%J QJM: Journal of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland
%D 2020
%A Di Franco, Martina
%A Martines, Giuseppe Fabio
%A Carpinteri, Giuseppe
%A Trovato, Guglielmo
%A Catalano, Daniela
%V ePub
%N ePub
%P ePub-ePub
%X BACKGROUND: Gender-based violence affects 35 to 45% of women worldwide, mostly coming from domestic violence. A good screening procedure in clinical practice is  useful, but WHO does not advise universal screening, recommending further research. <br><br>AIM: (1) To report the frequency of domestic violence cases among admissions to the  Emergency Room of a major Italian Hospital in 2020, including during complete  "Lockdown" period; (2) to document acute and chronic health effects of domestic  violence and (3) to asses usefulness of the WHO screening as a tool for uncovering  cases which would otherwise remain hidden. DESIGN AND METHODS: A database containing  all the information recorded for each of 19,160 patients in the Emergency Room was  constructed by a keyword search ("violence", "assault", "trauma") to filter the data  and retrieve cases of violence in the period between January 1st-June 2nd 2020. The  self-administered questionnaire of the WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and  Domestic Violence against Women was used in women referred to the emergency room for  any cause, excluding trauma. <br><br>RESULTS: 22.67% disclosed a recent history of domestic  violence, after completing the WHO questionnaire. Of those not participating to the  survey, diagnosis of domestic violence was only 0.6%(128/19,160). <br><br>CONCLUSION: Power  of detection of domestic violence by the WHO questionnaire is very high, while the  frequency of occurrence of these events in this population was considerable. Seemingly, it elicits the responsiveness to the topic of the volunteer interviewees. Its use should be firmly recommended, reasonably, while Covid-19 pandemic is  affecting health, rights and response.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I Oxford University Press
%@ 1460-2725
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa333