A national study led by UMass Medical School shows that men with disabilities are more likely to report being victims of sexual violence over their lifetimes than men without disabilities, according to Boston Magazine’s Hub Health. Researchers concluded that sexual assault prevention needs to include the disabled community.
The research found that men with disabilities were about 2.8 percent more likely to experience sexual violence and more likely to report experiences of non-consensual sex, Boston Magazine reported. The results will appear in the March 2016 print edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Data for the study was gathered from the 2005-2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual telephone survey conducted in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Island and Guam.
The study was led by Monika Mitra, PhD, associate professor in UMass Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and a research scientist within the medical school’s Disability, Health and Employment Policy Unit. Co-authors include UMass Medical School’s Carter Pratt, MPH; DPH’s Vera E. Mouradian, PhD; and Michael H. Fox, ScD, of the Division of Human Development and Disability in the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the CDC.
In a study published in the July 2014 issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Mitra and her co-authors found that men with disabilities are nearly twice as likely to experience lifetime and past-year violence from an intimate partner as men without disabilities.