Sydneysiders, Australia, are familiar with the disturbing statistics of intimate partner killings: On average, an Australian woman is murdered by a current or former intimate partner every 11 days.
While these deaths are increasingly reported, suicide accounts for a largely hidden share of intimate partner violence deaths and is likely much greater.
In Australia, an estimated 15 women take their own lives every week. Evidence from the post-mortem review suggests that intimate partner and domestic violence may be factors in 28-56% of female suicides, or 4 to 8 cases per week.
But these estimates come from reviews of isolated cause-of-death cases in just three states. We don’t know the incidence rates in every state, let alone nationwide.
A federal parliamentary inquiry is currently looking into links between domestic violence, sexual violence and suicide.
More than 200 written submissions and a series of public hearings exposed deep dissatisfaction with a system that covers up violence, retraumatizes victim survivors and allows preventable deaths to continue to occur.
Here are preliminary insights from a survey on preventing female suicide.
How partner violence increases women’s risk of suicide
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International research shows that intimate partner violence is one of the strongest social determinants of suicidal ideation in women. It increases a woman’s risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts by two to five times.
Women who experience coercive control often face ongoing threats, stalking and intimidation. Hypervigilance and fear can create exhaustion, isolation, and a deep feeling of being trapped.
Women described the serious impact of men’s use of physical violence in coercive control:
[T]The results of physical violence are more like over-arousal, difficulty stopping flight and fighting […] Physical attacks will open it […].
This type of abuse often escalates after separation
When women are unable to find immediate safety from partners, family members, or even systems that exclude or mistrust them, their distress is exacerbated and their risk of suicide increases.
If a woman is stalked, threatened or assaulted, treatment and crisis support will not stop her from having suicidal thoughts. She needs the violence to stop.
What themes emerged from the survey?
A parliamentary inquiry asked how services identify and respond to suicide risks. Communities answers by showing how the system itself often creates risk, compounds harm, and shapes the despair that precedes suicide.
Women who have experienced intimate partner violence say they have been dismissed, blamed for abuse or referred to mental health pathways during encounters, rather than having the violence acknowledged by health, policing and legal services.
This reflects a wider pattern in which women’s distress and suicidal thoughts and behaviors are seen as individual illnesses, rather than understood as responses to ongoing violence, coercive control and entrapment, and systemic failures.
When the effects of abuse are often misclassified as mental health crises, the dangers posed by violent partners or family members disappear from view.
Opportunities for prevention may disappear.
Violence is common but hidden
In Australia, 27% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15.
Yet most women never seek formal help. Only about 20% of women who experience intimate partner violence report it to the police. Less than 25% of people have access to medical services.
When women seek medical care for suicidal thoughts or behaviors, the violence often goes unrecognized.
One study found that nearly 60 percent of women who presented to emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts or behaviors had experienced intimate partner violence at some point in their lives. Yet hospital staff rarely ask about abuse.
In the context of technological facilitation and financial abuse, the invisibility of violence becomes even more apparent. Abusive partners now use technology to stalk, control and harass women in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder for the justice system to address.
Criminals exploit the tax system to file false returns, incur debt, and conceal important financial information, causing long-term financial harm.
Offenders also weaponize the child support system to continue financial abuse after separation.
These strategies often do not fit traditional definitions of intimate partner violence and may not be recognized.
What can we do about this?
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To prevent suicide, we must listen closely to victim-survivors and their supporters.
We need a national approach and improved collaboration between health, policing, justice, housing and specialist domestic violence services.
Emergency departments, police and frontline crisis services are vital. But they shouldn’t be women’s only entry point to support and safety. Outreach models are also critical to reaching women who would never access formal services.
Responses must also address the needs of groups at higher risk: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, migrant and refugee women, children and young people, victim-survivors of child sexual abuse, young people leaving family care, and women with disabilities. Responses should be culturally safe, disability-inclusive, and trauma-informed.
The National Death Review shows that examining previous patterns of abuse and risk factors can guide prevention. We need national comparisons of suicides related to intimate partner and domestic violence to understand the extent of the problem and prevent it.
Ultimately, preventing these deaths depends on directly addressing male violence. The Government is advancing a $4.7 billion national plan to end violence against women and children. Offenders must be held accountable through consistent legal consequences and interventions to stop the cycle of abuse and trauma.
Male violence is causing some women to commit suicide, and our system is exacerbating this risk. Until we confront both harms, these deaths will continue to happen. SKS
SKS
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
