Intimate partner violence and help-seeking: a systematic review and social psychological tracks for future research

Solveig Lelaurain (1) , Pierluigi Graziani (1) , Grégory Lo Monaco (1)

1 LPS - Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health concern: many women are affected by this phenomenon and by the difficulty of putting an end to it. This review of the literature aims to identify help-seeking facilitating and inhibiting factors in response to IPV. It was carried out on the PsycINFO and Medline databases using the following keywords: "intimate partner violence", "domestic violence", "help-seeking", and "help-seeking barrier". Ninety out of 771 eligible publications were included on the basis of inclusion criteria. The results highlight that (1) research on this phenomenon is very recent and underdeveloped in Europe, (2) theoretical and conceptual frameworks are poorly developed and extended, (3) there is a significant impact of violence characteristics (e.g., severity, type) on help-seeking (4) help-seeking is a complex and multifactorial process influences by a wide range of factors simultaneously individual and social. To conclude, these findings lead us to propose a psychosocial conceptualization of the help-seeking process by indicating how the levels of

Keywords: intimate partner violence; help-seeking; facilitating factors; inhibiting factors; review of the literature; psychosocial approach

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Psychology

Solveig Lelaurain, Pierluigi Graziani, Grégory Lo Monaco. Intimate partner violence and help-seeking: a systematic review and social psychological tracks for future research. European Psychologist, 2017, 22 (4), pp.263-281. ⟨10.1027/1016-9040/a000304⟩. ⟨hal-03839841⟩