Abstract
Background: Violence against women is one of the major public health and human rights problem in the world today. Domestic
violence refers to the violence emanating from the household and within relationships covered by familial or emotional attachment.
Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of Domestic Violence among rural women. To find out the type, reasons and help seeking
behavior of Domestic Violence.
Materials and methods: A Descriptive cross sectional study was undertaken among 380 women in three villages, which comes
under the field practice area of Department of Community Medicine, AVMC&H. The prevalence of Domestic Violence (DV) was
(200 women) 52.6%, among 380 women who participated in the study. Prevalence of DV was more among 31-40 yrs of age
group, 44%, and 95% were Hindus, 83.5% lived in nuclear family, 43% were married for more than 6-10 yrs and 48.5% has 2-3
living children. The study shows that 79.5% of husbands were involved in the act of DV and 52% of the participants reported
slapping/kicking/beating are the more common physical act of violence. Regarding the types of injury 63 (31.5%) women had
minor injuries, which needed no treatment, 44.5% had pain which lasted for more than one day. It was reported that 65.5% faced
DV because of the influence of alcohol by their partners and regarding the help seeking behavior, 35% of them had sought some
help and 26% have never told anyone about the incident.
Conclusion: These results provide vital information to assess the situation to develop interventions as well as policies and programmes
towards preventing domestic violence against women.

Key words: Domestic violence, prevalence, health seeking behavior, types of violence & women.