Addressing harmful alcohol use and poor mental health: Missed opportunities to prevent domestic violence

Addressing poor mental health and harmful alcohol use are promising yet underutilised strategies to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children (VAC). Inadequate attention has been given to the pathways that connect these highly prevalent and global phenomena.

To address this gap, we conducted a narrative evidence review on the links between harmful alcohol use, poor mental health, IPV, and VAC in the home.

We reviewed more than 450 articles, reviews and reports identifying pathways and relationships between these different phenomena and strategies to address poor mental health and alcohol use, prioritising strategies that could be implemented in low and middle-income countries and integrated into violence prevention programming.

The evidence reviewed collectively reveals strong evidence and clear pathways through which alcohol use and poor mental health can increase the risk of perpetrating and experiencing both IPV and VAC. The evidence also highlights significant opportunities to integrate strategies to address poor mental health and harmful alcohol use across individual, community, and structural levels into violence prevention programming. Based on our review, we argue for the need to enhance collective understanding of the relationship between poor mental health, alcohol use, VAC, and IPV and to ensure measurement and interventions that captures these synergies.

At a time when public health and foreign assistance funds are being significantly reduced, we must seize the opportunity to integrate evidence-based mental health and alcohol reduction strategies into IPV and VAC prevention efforts, thereby enhancing the magnitude, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability of impacts on all outcomes.