Introduction

Violence against women perpetrated by intimate partners constitutes a serious public health problem and a violation of human rights.

Objective

To analyze the responses of women in the context of intimate partner violence in a mental health care service.

Materials and Methods

Descriptive, cross-sectional study with consecutive sampling of 361 women from a population of 660 treated in outpatient psychiatric consultations. The Gelles and Straus Conflict Scale was used to measure violence. The data were processed with STATA using descriptive statistics.

Results

Of the 361 women, 88.6% (n=320) experienced intimate partner violence, with psychological-physical violence being the most common combination (45%). 78.1% (n=250) responded with some type of violence, and 11.4% (n=41) exercised unilateral violence, mostly psychological. The most frequent diagnoses were anxiety disorders (37.9%) and mood disorders (32.4%).

Conclusion

Behavioral responses to violence are heterogeneous and must be interpreted within the clinical and social context of the patients.