Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Community Mental Health Journal https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-020-00635-2 ORIGINAL PAPER Violence Against Women with Mental Illness and Social Norms and Beliefs: Nursing Professional Perspective Poreddi Vijayalakshmi 1  · Sailaxmi Gandhi 2  · Somagattu Sai Nikhil Reddy 3  · Marimuthu Palaniappan 4  · Suresh Badamath 5 Received: 1 November 2019 / Accepted: 13 May 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Violence against women is a priority public health issue globally and women with mental illness are at double disadvantage. While social norms and beliefs play a critical role in infuencing violence among women, limited or no research is available from India. To explore nurses and nursing students’ views on social norms and beliefs that support Violence against women with mental illness. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out among randomly selected registered nurses and nursing students (N = 209) using self-reported questionnaires. Majority of the participants confronted norms (76.7%) and situations that justify (67.7%) abuse among women with mental illness. Nurses reported more negative attitudes than nurs- ing students with regard to norms and beliefs (t = − 2.714, p < 0.007) and justifability of abuse (t = − 3.089, p < 0.002). The fndings suggest suitable academic programs to extinguish the prevailing cultural beliefs that support abuse in women with mental illness. Keywords Abuse · Attitudes · Cultural norms · Justifability of abuse · Violence among women · Women with mental illness Introduction Violence against women (VAW) is a global public health problem as on an average, one third of women are afected globally in their lifetime (WHO 2017). Violence against women is defned as “Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or men- tal harm or sufering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (UN 1993). Tradition- ally, violence against women is deeply embedded in social and cultural norms of many communities across the world. Social norms are the shared perceptions that exist within social groups and are sustained through group approval and disapproval (Mackie et al. 2015). Substantial evidence suggests that violence against women is culturally approved across the world (Chowdhury 2015; Fattah and Camellia 2020; Puri et al. 2010; Sadiq 2017; Standish 2014; Taylor et al. 2017). In addition, atti- tudes and beliefs play a critical role as they infuence vio- lence among women. It was also found that 36% of people in developing countries believed that violence against women is justifed in certain situations (Sardinha and Nájera Catalán 2018).While globalization has brought about certain changes in social values and attitudes towards women issues in South Asia, traditional male-controlled values still persist and con- tribute to the violation of women’s human rights (Bishwajit et al. 2016). Earlier research showed that victimized women sufer from poor physical and mental health and often seek * Poreddi Vijayalakshmi pvijayalakshmireddy@gmail.com 1 College of Nursing, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Institute of National Importance, Bangalore, India 2 Department of Nursing, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Institute of National Importance, Bangalore, India 3 Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore, India 4 Department of Bio-Statistics, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Institute of National Importance, Bangalore, India 5 Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Institute of National Importance, Bangalore, India