Domestic violence against people with disabilities: prevalence and trend analyses.
Domestic violence reports among disabled adults in Taiwan jumped a large share every year—so screen every client with ID or psychosis for abuse at every visit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lin et al. (2010) counted every domestic violence report in Taiwan that listed a disabled victim. They looked at four years, 2006-2009. The team split the victims by diagnosis: intellectual disability, psychosis, communication problems, and others.
What they found
Reports shot up a large share each year. The sharpest rise hit people with intellectual disability, psychosis, or communication impairments. By 2009, disabled adults were four times more likely to appear in domestic-violence records than in 2006.
How this fits with other research
Zheng et al. (2018) found that adults with ASD are over three times more likely to have schizophrenia. This overlap matters because Jin-Ding’s data show psychosis as a top risk marker for victimisation. Together, the papers flag the same group for two dangers: higher mental-health needs and higher abuse risk.
Yu et al. (2021) looked at the flip side: criminal charges. They found young adults with ASD are NOT over-arrested and re-offend at the same rate as peers. Jin-Ding’s spike in abuse reports does not come from the same adults committing crimes; it shows they are targets, not perpetrators.
Thomas et al. (2021) reviewed death records in Australia and found half were wrong the first time. Like Jin-Ding, they mined administrative data on people with ID and uncovered big gaps. Both papers warn: if you trust the first tick in a file, you miss serious risk.
Why it matters
You can’t fix what you don’t screen. Add two questions to every intake: “Have you been hit, yelled at, or kept from food or meds at home?” and “Do you feel safe where you live?” If the client has ID, psychosis, or limited speech, probe twice. One extra minute catches the a large share annual rise Jin-Ding revealed and keeps your clients out of the next report.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study analyzed national data from "Domestic Violence Report System" derived primarily from the Council of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assaults Prevention, Ministry of the Interior, Taiwan, to describe the reported prevalence of domestic violence in people with disabilities and to examine the time-effect on the prevalence from years 2006 to 2009. The annual reported prevalence of domestic violence victims in people with disabilities was slightly lower than the general population. However, the reported rate changed significantly in people with disabilities over the period of 2006-2009, the victim number and rate (per ten-thousand) of reported cases in different years were 1260 (12.84), 1725 (16.90), 2163 (20.79) and 3157 (29.48). People with voice or speech disability, chronic psychosis and intellectual disability were the most domestic violence reported prevalence among the disabilities in the study. Those disabilities, such as chronic psychosis, intellectual disability, vision disability, hearing disability and multi-disabilities show increased significantly in annual reported rate in curve estimation for linear model over the period of 2006-2009. Finally, we found the average increase rate of annual reported prevalence in people of disabilities was 3.7 times of the general population (9.79% vs. 36.08%). Intellectual disability (41.52%), vision or speech disability (38.59%) and chronic psychosis (37.96%) were the most increasing disability type in average of annual reported prevalence of domestic violence among disabilities during the period of 2006-2009. The present study suggests health and welfare authorities should play vital roles in identifying and providing appropriate services for people with disabilities who encounter domestic violence.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.07.018