Domestic violence incurs significant costs in health care

A recent study has found that domestic violence incurs significant costs to health care, social welfare and legal services, according to a study.

Conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), the University of Jyväskylä and Statistics Finland, the study, however, found that that health care costs started to decrease once the violence was identified.

"It is important to remember that the human cost of violence is high. It causes insecurity, fear, loss of functional capacity and difficulties in trusting other people,” explained Senior Researcher of THL Johanna Hietamäki.

The study examined the health care costs incurred by domestic violence experienced by women and men between 2015 and 2020 and the usage and costs of health care, social welfare and legal services during the last year.

The study also took into account the costs of domestic violence experienced by children or experienced by adults during their childhood.

Compared to the rest of the population, the additional cost of health care services for those who had experienced domestic violence totalled EUR 1,024 per year. These additional costs were found to accumulate every year over the whole six-year monitoring period.

When compared to those who had not experienced such violence, domestic violence led to an annual increase of 60–90% in social welfare costs and a 70% increase in legal costs (including police costs).

Violence experienced in childhood, meanwhile, corresponded to 50% higher costs on social welfare and legal services in adulthood.

In comparisons with those who had not experienced domestic violence, the direct additional health care costs incurred annually as a result of physical intimate partner violence experienced by women amounted to EUR 150 million.

"This is probably an underestimate of the health care costs. In addition, the victims appear to be using health and social services twice as much as the rest of the population, and legal services up to four times as much,” said Postdoctoral Researcher Heli Siltala of the University of Jyväskylä.

"Our research does not cover the indirect costs of violence, such as the number of days of sick leave, incapacity for work, or lost productivity. In this respect, too, the cost estimates presented in the study are more likely to remain below rather than exceed the actual costs,” Siltala added.

According to the population survey, 75% of Finns aged 16–74 have experienced domestic violence of either a mental, physical or sexual nature at least once in their lives. A total of 44% of respondents had experienced such violence in a relationship, while 65% had experienced it in childhood. During the past year, 4% of Finns have experienced domestic violence.

For the period 2015–2020, the client registers for health care services, the police and shelters for victims of domestic violence clearly contained more women who had experienced domestic violence than men. Of the women who had experienced domestic violence, 74% were in specialised medical care registers, 69% in primary health care registers, 93% in the registers of shelters for victims of domestic violence and 78% in police registers.

According to the population survey, domestic violence is common and gender-based. Significantly more women had experienced domestic violence than men, with 48% of women and 39% of men having experienced such violence at some point during their lives, and 5% of women and 3.9% of men having had such experiences during the last year.

“The population survey also found that many men had experienced domestic violence at some point during their lives. Women had particularly experienced higher levels of physical violence, sexual violence, and persecution,” Hietamäki said.

The results of the study encourage more effective intervention in domestic violence in order to help reduce the human suffering caused by the violence and its costs to society. It is important that early assistance be part of the work of every social and health care worker.

On the basis of the study, it is recommended that changes be made to the legislation concerning multi-professional working groups on violence prevention work and coordinators of violence prevention work in wellbeing services counties and municipalities. In addition, teaching on violence prevention work and awareness of the phenomenon of domestic violence should be included in basic education for all social welfare, health care and legal fields.

The research data is based on the registers of basic and specialised medical care, the police, Kela, and shelters for victims of domestic violence as well as the Gender Based Violence population survey. The costs for those who had experienced domestic violence were compared with those of reference group members who had not experienced domestic violence. The study focused only on the direct costs of violence for social, health and legal services.