Domestic violence against people with disabilities: Prevalence and trend analyses

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.