The Mental-Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence in Ethiopia
How to cite this publication:
Eugenia Maria Frezza, Andreas Kotsadam, Charlotte Ringdal, Espen Villanger (2026). The Mental-Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence in Ethiopia. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI Working Paper WP 2026:01)
We study the effect of intimate partner violence (IPV) on survivors’ mental health in Ethiopia. We use unique panel data collected between 2016 and 2021, which track women across six waves and include measures of IPV and mental health. Exploiting within-person variation, we compare mental health outcomes before and after newly reported IPV. We distinguish physical/sexual IPV, involving any physical or sexual act, from psychological IPV. The onset of physical/sexual IPV leads to a substantial decline in subjective wellbeing—both in cognitive evaluations of life and in emotional distress. We detect no statistically significant change following psychological IPV but neither can we reject meaningful effect sizes. These results provide causal evidence on the psychological costs of physical/sexual IPV in a low-income setting.
