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New study examines link between family violence and women’s deaths by suicide

Australian Catholic University research has examined the critical but often overlooked link between family violence and women’s deaths by suicide.

The Victorian research sits alongside growing advocacy and mounting evidence of the impact of family violence victimisation on women’s mental health and wellbeing.

The exploratory study, led by Dr Stefani Vasil (ACU), Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon (Sequre Consulting) and Professor Marie Segrave (The University of Melbourne), involved interviews with experts across the family violence, health and justice sectors in Victoria and the United Kingdom.

It explored how family violence can contribute to a woman’s death by suicide, emphasising the need to pay closer attention to how violence shapes suicide risk.

The report highlights the importance of recognising the full spectrum of family violence-related deaths.

“Deaths by suicide following family violence victimisation rarely receive the same scrutiny as intimate partner homicides. This report calls for a shift in focus,” Dr Vasil said.

The findings point to the importance of better understanding how women’s suicide deaths are investigated, particularly through the coronial process, which is the primary mechanism for such inquiries in Victoria.

The findings also highlight the need for greater recognition of specific forms of intimate partner violence, including coercion to suicide, and the ways perpetrators may manipulate a woman’s suicidality as part of an ongoing pattern of control.

Funded by the Victorian Women’s Trust through the Con-Irwin Sub-Fund, the report identified opportunities to better understand and respond to risk to of suicide following family violence victimisation. 

“The cumulative impacts of violence and trauma on women’s risk of suicide should be in focus for frontline practitioners,” Dr Vasil said.

“Despite significant reforms in recent years to risk assessment frameworks across Australia, we may still be missing opportunities to identify women victim-survivors’ risk of suicide and support improved mental wellbeing.”

The report also noted:

• family violence risk assessment frameworks could more explicitly incorporate risk of suicide.
• greater integration, data-sharing and cross-sector collaboration would enable more comprehensive understandings of women’s risk pathways and facilitate earlier intervention.
• access to safe housing and wraparound support services is an urgent issue. In Victoria, women and children escaping family violence are often placed in motels; settings frontline practitioners described as unsafe, particularly for women experiencing suicidal thoughts.

“No victim-survivor should have to choose between staying in a violent home or being placed in a motel with no security, and limited access to much-needed support services,” Professor Fitz-Gibbon said.

“Crisis responses should not be crisis-inducing. This study reinforces wider calls across the sector for greater investment in secure, trauma-informed housing options that prioritise women’s safety and recovery.”

The study looked to the UK to better understand the question of perpetrator accountability. The issue of accountability in these cases remains a central but largely unresolved challenge that needs further attention, alongside critical attention to system failings if further deaths are to be prevented.

The full report is available here.

If you or anyone you know needs immediate support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or via lifeline.org.au.

Media Contact: Damien Stannard, 0484 387349, damien.stannard@acu.edu.au