The line on the graph looks like a dip in the road – downhill for a few years after 2009, then slowly climbing back up over a decade starting in 2014.
It tracks the number of police reports in Canada related to intimate partner violence. For a while, things were improving. But that’s over now, with violence rates (54 per 1,000 for Canadian women) now back to the levels of 15 years ago. Similar trends are evident in the US, where aggravated domestic assaults have risen to heights not seen in more than 20 years.
What were we doing right for those good years? What did we start doing wrong? When the issue is something as deeply in the shadows as intimate partner violence, a clear answer is hard to come by. With 80 per cent of people experiencing IPV not even reporting the crime to police, any trend line is only ever scraping the surface.
But the rising stress of daily life on Planet Earth can’t be ignored. Trend lines tied to family well-being on so many fronts are headed in the wrong direction. Yet our country lacks even the most basic of plans for dealing with the multitude of issues feeding into our growing social crisis.
It isn’t just intimate partner violence that’s increasing. Police-reported violence against children and youth in Canada has hit historic highs, having risen 32 per cent since 2018.
Financial worries are increasing: 42 per cent of Canadians in a recent FP Canada survey say money is their top source of stress. The housing crisis rages on, with two-thirds of Canadians reporting they’re unable to comfortably afford a monthly mortgage payment of more than $1,700 a month even while the mortgage payment for an average-priced Vancouver condo is almost three times that much.
Business insolvencies are on the rise after their own brief dip in the road came to an end in 2020. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in a decade. Poverty rates are rising, as are stress levels; almost a third of Canadians ages 35-49 report feeling very stressed every day.
Families with children are under even greater stress, as are their children. More than a quarter of the cohort of young Canadians followed in a national study tracking mental health perceptions reported in 2023 that their mental health wasn’t good, which was twice as many as four years earlier during the first wave of the study.
School absentee rates are up, with some Canadian school districts reporting as many as two-thirds of elementary-age students absent at least 10 per cent of the time.
All of those trends are known to have an impact on the incidence of family violence. Stressors like household finances, job insecurity and poor mental health are known risk factors for increased violence within families.
Life pressures are mounting in all directions. A rise in family violence is too often the result.
Family violence causes harm long after the act is done and gone, both to the person experiencing the abuse and to any children in the home who see it happen.
The direct victims of an act of violence are at major risk of brain injury if the abuse involved impacts to the head, shaking, or strangulation. At least 65 per cent of victims of intimate partner violence end up with a brain injury.
A child who witnessed the violence may have their own health and economic opportunities negatively affected long into adulthood, or end up with a brain injury themselves if they’re also targeted for abuse. So many people living with a brain injury from abuse won’t even know they have one, even as it complicates their health, relationships, parenting, and ability to function at work.
We have talked for decades in Canada about the urgency of ending intimate partner violence. But reducing family violence can’t be achieved in isolation from work that strengthens Canada’s social safety net and supports a strong, equitable economy.
On that front, the trend lines are equally alarming. The gap between Canada’s richest and poorest citizens hit a historic high earlier this year. The top 20 per cent of wealthiest Canadians now accounts for two-thirds of our country’s total net worth, while the bottom 40 per cent accounts for just 3.3 per cent.
The rise in intimate partner violence is a red flag across multiple indicators of social health. We are not doing well. Worse, we have no actionable plan for doing better.
We have been winging it for far too long. With so many social indicators going in the wrong direction, the question that hangs over all of us is how much worse we’re prepared to let it get.
It tracks the number of police reports in Canada related to intimate partner violence. For a while, things were improving. But that’s over now, with violence rates (54 per 1,000 for Canadian women) now back to the levels of 15 years ago. Similar trends are evident in the US, where aggravated domestic assaults have risen to heights not seen in more than 20 years.
What were we doing right for those good years? What did we start doing wrong? When the issue is something as deeply in the shadows as intimate partner violence, a clear answer is hard to come by. With 80 per cent of people experiencing IPV not even reporting the crime to police, any trend line is only ever scraping the surface.
But the rising stress of daily life on Planet Earth can’t be ignored. Trend lines tied to family well-being on so many fronts are headed in the wrong direction. Yet our country lacks even the most basic of plans for dealing with the multitude of issues feeding into our growing social crisis.
It isn’t just intimate partner violence that’s increasing. Police-reported violence against children and youth in Canada has hit historic highs, having risen 32 per cent since 2018.
Financial worries are increasing: 42 per cent of Canadians in a recent FP Canada survey say money is their top source of stress. The housing crisis rages on, with two-thirds of Canadians reporting they’re unable to comfortably afford a monthly mortgage payment of more than $1,700 a month even while the mortgage payment for an average-priced Vancouver condo is almost three times that much.
Business insolvencies are on the rise after their own brief dip in the road came to an end in 2020. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in a decade. Poverty rates are rising, as are stress levels; almost a third of Canadians ages 35-49 report feeling very stressed every day.
Families with children are under even greater stress, as are their children. More than a quarter of the cohort of young Canadians followed in a national study tracking mental health perceptions reported in 2023 that their mental health wasn’t good, which was twice as many as four years earlier during the first wave of the study.
School absentee rates are up, with some Canadian school districts reporting as many as two-thirds of elementary-age students absent at least 10 per cent of the time.
All of those trends are known to have an impact on the incidence of family violence. Stressors like household finances, job insecurity and poor mental health are known risk factors for increased violence within families.
Life pressures are mounting in all directions. A rise in family violence is too often the result.
Family violence causes harm long after the act is done and gone, both to the person experiencing the abuse and to any children in the home who see it happen.
The direct victims of an act of violence are at major risk of brain injury if the abuse involved impacts to the head, shaking, or strangulation. At least 65 per cent of victims of intimate partner violence end up with a brain injury.
A child who witnessed the violence may have their own health and economic opportunities negatively affected long into adulthood, or end up with a brain injury themselves if they’re also targeted for abuse. So many people living with a brain injury from abuse won’t even know they have one, even as it complicates their health, relationships, parenting, and ability to function at work.
We have talked for decades in Canada about the urgency of ending intimate partner violence. But reducing family violence can’t be achieved in isolation from work that strengthens Canada’s social safety net and supports a strong, equitable economy.
On that front, the trend lines are equally alarming. The gap between Canada’s richest and poorest citizens hit a historic high earlier this year. The top 20 per cent of wealthiest Canadians now accounts for two-thirds of our country’s total net worth, while the bottom 40 per cent accounts for just 3.3 per cent.
The rise in intimate partner violence is a red flag across multiple indicators of social health. We are not doing well. Worse, we have no actionable plan for doing better.
We have been winging it for far too long. With so many social indicators going in the wrong direction, the question that hangs over all of us is how much worse we’re prepared to let it get.
3 comments:
Was covid a catalyst?
Covid seems to have been a catalyst for many negative social changes, so probably. This piece from Toronto talks about a major rise in IPV-related calls to a crisis line between April and September 2020. But it's like we can't get back from where the pandemic took us. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/domestic-intimate-partner-violence-up-in-pandemic-1.5914344
"A child who witnessed the violence may have their own health and economic opportunities negatively affected long into adulthood, or end up with a brain injury themselves if they’re also targeted for abuse. So many people living with a brain injury from abuse won’t even know they have one, even as it complicates their health, relationships, parenting, and ability to function at work".....this is me and more as life also can add abuse from teachers and even violence in the forms of accidents add addiction to the melody. i call my brain damage my poetic licence but it has some costs.. but i am also a kind of genius and i can prove it. i am creative and not programable any more. it is a kind of freedom but not without costs...
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