Tobacco Use and Domestic Violence in Thailand: Matching Case-Control Study

Background: Tobacco dependence is not only a major health risk which can be prevented, but also is a starting point to use other substances and domestic violence. Objective: To study the association between tobacco use and domestic violence in Thai families. Methods: The study was designed as a matched case-control study in women aged 15 years and over, living in households across the country, both in urban and rural areas, in 9 provinces of Thailand. The total of 600 participants were included in this study which half of them are from domestic abused families while the other half are from nonabused families. The criteria of age, education, economic status, housing area and region were determined. Differences between groups were performed using chi-square test and t test. Results: Domestic violence families (55.7%) used tobacco as compared to 42% of families without violence who hadn’t used tobacco. The tobacco used families were significantly having more domestic violence 1.63 times (95% CI 1.17 - 2.29) than non-tobacco used families. Conclusions: This study showed that tobacco used in the families were more likely to have domestic violence than non-used families. This could raise awareness on tobacco used to create campaigns to reduce the rate of tobacco used which causes domestic violence.