The Most Prevalent Intimate Partner Violence; Physical, Sexual, Verbal, or Emotional in Early Marriage: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Context: Early marriage is relatively common in the world and has become a public concern. One of the problems seen in early marriage is the high prevalence of partner violence against women, which, along with other harmful effects of early marriage, can hurt a woman’s mental and physical health. This research is the first narrative review investigating the most prevalent type of intimate partner violence and the risk factors for violence against women who marry as a child. Evidence Acquisition: A skim and scan review related to the correlation between child marriage and any type of intimate partner violence was done. Also a comprehensive search of the Web of Science, PsycINFO, PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, and Google Scholar was carried out from 2000 to 2019. A comprehensive search of the Web of Science, PsycINFO, PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, and Google Scholar was carried out from 2000 to 2019. The second stage of the search was conducted in grey literature. To facilitate a systematic approach, we adopted the PECO framework. Results: The database search yielded 756 articles relevant to child marriage and different types of intimate partner violence, with other articles added in a manual review of reference lists. In the final review, a total of 12 articles were included as they contained the eligibility criteria. The result of this narrative review study showed the relationship between child marriage and intimate partner violence. Conclusions: ince the present study considers physical and sexual violence the most common type of violence against women and other studies have explicitly pointed to the adverse consequences of such violence, it seems necessary to make efforts to reduce early marriage by providing economic opportunities and promoting education and as a result to avoid adverse effects, including partner violence.