Domestic violence leads to increased use of tobacco, a latest study finds.
Researchers at the Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health Victims found that victims of domestic violence are more likely to smoke.
There have been numerous side-effects of domestic violence listed out. It causes post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and sexually transmitted diseases.
For the study, the researchers studied 231,892 women aged 15 between 29. Their information was collected through the Demographic and Health Surveys.
Researchers took factors such as age, education, and household wealth into account and found that women who suffered domestic violence were 58 percent more likely to smoke.
Researchers believe women smoke to self-medicate to cope with stress. "A recent WHO report on IPV recommended that there is a clear need to scale-up efforts to both prevent IPV from happening in the first place and to provide necessary services for women experiencing IPV," senior author Peter A. Muennig, MD, MPH, associate professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, said in a news release.
"Smoking is associated with cardiovascular disease, and therefore may explain part of the association between exposure to IPV and cardiovascular disease," said first author Rishi Caleyachetty, MBBS, PhD, an epidemiologist on a Fulbright Scholarship at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, according to a statement. "However, to my knowledge this has not been extensively examined."
The researchers said that care givers and healthcare providers can provide information on the consequences of smoking and motivate the IPV victims to quit the habit.
The findings are published in the journal 'Global Public Health.'
