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Domestic violence against men
Barber CF (2008) Domestic violence against men. Nursing Standard. 22, 51, 35-39. Date of acceptance: February 19 2008.Summary
This article reviews the literature relating to domestic violence against men and examines some of the reasons why men are reluctant to report violent episodes. The article focuses on men as the victims and women as the perpetrators of domestic violence and identifies gaps in service provision. The role of the nurse in supporting male victims is also discussed.

Author
Christopher F Barberis an agency nurse and NVQ assessor, Birmingham City Council. Email: chrisjeanfred@hotmail.com

Keywords
Domestic violence; Men’s health; Support services These keywords are based on the subject headings from the British Nursing Index. This article has been subject to double-blind review. For author and research article guidelines visit the Nursing Standard home page atnursingstandard.rcnpublishing.co.uk. For related articles visit our online archive and search using the keywords.

INFORMATION RELATING to domestic violence has largely focused on women as the victims and men as the perpetrators. Domestic violence against men tends to go unrecognised since men are less likely to admit to or report such incidents because of embarrassment, fear of ridicule and lack of support services.It is a taboo subject that is often ignored or trivialised by society, which means that the extent of the problem remains unknown. As a result, male victims of domestic violence may not have their health and social care needs met by healthcare professionals (Du Plat-Jones 2006).

Defining domestic violence
A battered spouse or co-habitant is defined as an individual subjected to physicalviolence by a husband, wife or co-habitant (Martin and Law 2006). Battery is defined as the intentional NURSING STANDARD

application of physical force to an individual without their consent (Martin and Law 2006). The term battered spouse implies a physical event – the battery. In recent years the term ‘battered spouse’ has no longer been widely accepted as abuse takes on many forms aside fromphysical violence and occurs between different groups of individuals in all social and sexual groups, not just between those who are married. The terms domestic violence and abuse can go beyond these parameters and include couples who are not married but are living together, and also couples who are in same-sex relationships. Lawrence (2003) defined domestic violence as verbal, sexual and emotionalintimidation or financial abuse. A similar definition was provided by Kelly (1999) who defined it as the emotional, physical, sexual, psychological or economic abuse of power. Domestic violence can also be viewed as an abusive exercise of power and control over others, which leaves individuals feeling scared and intimidated. The Home Office (Undated) defines domestic violence as: ‘any incident ofthreatening behaviour, violence or abuse between adults who are or have been in a relationship together, or between family members, regardless of gender or sexuality… it is a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour through which the abuser seeks power over their victim.’ There is a distinction between domestic violence and domestic abuse. Domestic violence suggests physical aggression, whiledomestic abuse encompasses a far wider range of behaviours including financial, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse based on power structures. However, some authors use the term ‘domestic violence’ to encompass a wide range of abusive behaviours. For example, Sniechowski and Sherven (2004) define domestic violence as that which relates to verbal, physical, sexual and emotional intimidation or...