Emotional and Physical Symptoms Following Intimate Partner Violence Victimization in the United States: Implications for Law and Public Health Policy

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a public health issue that produces significant psycho-logical and physiological consequences. This study examines whether sustaining a seri-ous physical injury increases the likelihood that IPV survivors experience emotional and physical symptoms. We analyzed nonfatal violence by an intimate partner reported in the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey (2009–2019) and applied survey-adjusted lo-gistic regression models. We assessed two dichotomous outcomes: (1) whether respond-ents reported at least one emotional symptom (e.g., vulnerable, violated, distrustful, or unsafe) and (2) whether they reported at least one physical symptom (e.g., headaches, fa-tigue, or muscle tension). We define serious physical injury as broken bones, gunshot wounds, internal injuries, or loss of consciousness. We included demographic character-istics (age, race, sex, and educational attainment) and crime-related factors (sexual as-sault, simple assault, and aggravated assault) as control variables. The results show that IPV survivors who sustained serious injuries had significantly higher odds of reporting both emotional and physical symptoms than those who did not sustain such injuries. These findings underscore how serious injury compounds the burden of IPV and empha-size the need for comprehensive medical, legal, and psychosocial interventions to address its lasting health impacts.