The relationship between domestic violence experienced by pregnant women and prenatal attachment levels

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between domestic violence and prenatal attachment in pregnant women. In this descriptive study, 98 pregnant women who had a healthy fetus at or above 20 weeks of gestation, were married and living with their husbands participated. The data of this study, which was conducted in March-May 2023 in the Adana City Training and Research Hospital's Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics were collected by the researcher by the face-to-face interview technique using Personal Information Form, Prenatal Attachment Inventory and Domestic Violence Against Women Scale questionnaires. In our study, the Domestic Violence Against Women Scale cronbach alpha value was calculated as 0.96, and the Prenatal attachment inventory cronbach alpa value was calculated as 0.95. Descriptive statistics, Student's t test, One Way ANOVA test, and Pearson Correlation test were used to evaluate the relationship between scale total scores. The Pearson Correlation statistic was used to evaluate the relationship between the scale total scores. The statistical significance level of the data was taken as p<0.05. The mean age of the pregnant women participating in the study was 28.2±5.5. It was determined that 19.4% of the participants were university graduates, 37.8% had their first pregnancy, and 70.4% had a planned pregnancy. In the study, it was determined that 32.7% of the pregnant women were exposed to at least one type of violence in the past. The mean score of the Domestic Violence Against Women Scale of the pregnant women participating in the study was 70.92±16.02, and the total mean score of the Prenatal Attachment Inventory was 43.32±12.83. According to the study, it was determined that there was a positive and significant relationship between the Total Violence Against Women Scale score and the Prenatal Attachment Inventory Total score (p<0.05). As a result, as the domestic violence against women increased, prenatal attachment increased. In order to prevent violence in pregnancy, it is recommended that violence screening should be performed from the prenatal period, quantitative studies related to violence in pregnant women should be conducted and nurses should take an active role in this issue.