Australians are familiar with the disturbing statistics of intimate partner homicide: one Australian woman is killed every 11 days, on average, by a current or former intimate partner.

While these deaths are increasingly reported on, suicide represents a largely hidden and potentially far greater part of the intimate partner violence death toll.

Each week in Australia, on average, an estimated 15 women die by suicide. Evidence from coronial reviews suggests intimate partner and family violence may be contributing factors in 28–56% of suicides among women – or four to eight per week.

But these estimates come from isolated coronial case reviews in only three states (Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia). We don’t have a clear picture of the incidence in each state, let alone nationally.

A federal parliamentary inquiry is currently investigating the links between domestic, family violence and sexual violence and suicide.

More than 200 written submissions and a series of public hearings have exposed deep frustration with systems that obscure violence, re-traumatise victim-survivors and allow preventable deaths to continue.

Here are early insights from the inquiry about preventing women’s suicide.

How partner violence increases women’s suicide risk

International research shows intimate partner violence is one of the strongest social determinants of suicidal thoughts in women. It increases women’s risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts two- to five-fold.

Women experiencing coercive control often face constant threats, stalking and intimidation. Hypervigilance and fearfulness create exhaustion, isolation, and a deep sense of being trapped.

Women have described the acute impacts of men’s physical violence used within coercive control:

[T]he results of physical violence are more like hyper-arousal, difficulty turning off flight and fight […] a physical attack sort of switches that on […].

This abuse often escalates after separation.

When women cannot access immediate safety from partners, family members, or even from systems that dismiss or disbelieve them, their distress compounds and suicide risk increases.

If a woman is being stalked, threatened, or attacked, therapy and crisis support aren’t going to stop her suicidal thoughts. She needs the violence to stop.

What themes are emerging from the inquiry?

The parliamentary inquiry asked how services identify and respond to suicide risk. The community answered by showing how systems themselves often produce risk, compound harm and shape the hopelessness that precedes suicide.

Women with experiences of intimate partner violence described being dismissed, blamed for the abuse, or redirected into mental health pathways during contact rather than having the violence recognised by health, policing and legal services.

This reflects a broader pattern in which women’s distress and suicidal thoughts and behaviours are treated as individual disorders rather than understood as responses to ongoing violence, coercive control and entrapment and systemic failures.

When the impacts of abuse are routinely misclassified as a mental health crisis, the danger posed by violent partners or family members disappears from view.

Opportunities for prevention can vanish with it.

Violence is common but hidden

In Australia, 27% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15.

Yet most women never seek formal help. Only around 20% of women who experience intimate partner violence report it to police. Fewer than 25% access health services.

When women access health services for suicidal thoughts or actions, violence often isn’t identified.

One study found nearly 60% of women presenting to emergency departments with suicidal thoughts or actions had experienced intimate partner violence at some point in their life. Yet hospital staff rarely ask about abuse.

The invisibility of violence becomes even more pronounced in the context of technology-facilitated and financial abuse. Abusive partners now use technology to track, control and harass women in ways that are difficult to detect and even harder for the justice system to address.

Perpetrators have used tax systems to lodge false returns, incur debts and withhold critical financial information, inflicting long-term economic harm.

Perpetrators have also weaponised the child support system to continue financial abuse after separation.

These tactics often fall outside traditional definitions of intimate partner violence and may not be recognised.

What can be done about it?

To prevent suicides, we must listen closely to the voices of victim-survivors and their advocates.

We need a national approach and improved collaboration between health, policing, justice, housing and specialist domestic and family violence services.

Emergency departments, police and front-line crisis services are vital. But they should not be women’s only entry points to support and safety pathways. Outreach models are also essential for reaching women who will never connect with a formal service.

Responses must also meet the needs of groups facing higher risks: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, migrant and refugee women, children and young people, victim-survivors of childhood sexual abuse, young people leaving out-of-home care and women with disability. Responses should be culturally safe, disability-inclusive and trauma-informed.

National death reviews show examining patterns of prior abuse and risk factors can guide prevention. We need a comparable national picture of suicides linked to intimate partner and family violence to understand the scale of the problem and prevent it.

Finally, preventing these deaths depends on directly addressing men’s violence. The government is progressing a A$4.7 billion national plan to end violence against women and children. It’s essential to hold offenders to account, through consistent legal consequences and interventions, to stop cycles of abuse and trauma.

Male violence is driving some women’s suicide, and our systems are compounding the risk. Until we confront both harms, these deaths will continue.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can also call 13YARN on 13 92 76.

For information and advice about family and intimate partner violence contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact 000.

Victoria Rasmussen receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) stipend.

As social media becomes a central part of young people’s lives, concerns are growing about its impact on their mental health. Yet public debates and measures tend to treat adolescents as one homogeneous group. We frequently ignore the fact that social media use does not affect all young people in the same way – nor does it have the same impacts on their wellbeing.

In a recent chapter of the World Happiness Report 2026, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the University of Oxford, we have examined how problematic social media use relates to the wellbeing of adolescents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

We looked at 43 countries spanning six broad regions – Anglo-Celtic, Caucasus-Black Sea, Central-Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Western Europe – covering mainly European countries and their immediate neighbouring areas.

Using data from over 330,000 young people, we found a clear and consistent pattern: higher levels of problematic social media use – that is, compulsive or uncontrolled engagement with social media – are associated with poorer wellbeing.

Teenagers who report more problematic use tend to experience more psychological complaints, such as feeling low, nervous, irritable, or having difficulty sleeping. They also have lower life satisfaction, a measure of how positively they evaluate their lives as a whole.

This pattern appears across all countries in our study, but its strength varies from one country to another. It is particularly pronounced in Anglo-Celtic countries such as the UK and Ireland, while it is comparatively weaker in the Caucasus-Black Sea region.

Socioeconomic background matters

The story does not end with geography. Globally, teenagers from less advantaged backgrounds tend to be more vulnerable to the negative consequences of problematic social media use than their more advantaged peers.

This means socioeconomic status – the material and social resources available to a household, such as income and living conditions – actively shapes the risks and opportunities that young people experience as a result of online environments.

Interestingly, these inequalities are especially visible when we look at life satisfaction. Differences between socioeconomic groups are smaller when it comes to psychological complaints, but much clearer and more consistent for how adolescents evaluate their lives overall.

One likely reason is that life satisfaction is more sensitive to social comparisons. Social media exposes young people to constant benchmarks – what others have, do, and achieve – which can amplify differences in perceived opportunities and resources.

At the same time, these patterns are not identical everywhere. For instance, socioeconomic differences in psychological complaints tend to be modest in most regions including continental European countries such as France, Austria or Belgium, but are more clearly observed in Anglo-Celtic countries such as Scotland and Wales.

In contrast, socioeconomic gaps in life satisfaction appear across most regions, although they tend to be weaker in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Cyprus and Greece.

A growing problem

We also examined how these patterns have evolved over time. Between 2018 and 2022, the link between problematic social media use and poor adolescent wellbeing became stronger.

This suggests that the risks linked to problematic use may have intensified in recent years, possibly reflecting the growing role of digital technologies in young people’s daily lives, particularly during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Importantly, this intensification has affected teenagers across socioeconomic groups in broadly similar ways in most regions. In other words, while inequalities remain they have not widened over this period.

Leer más: Social media addiction disrupts the sleep, moods and social activities of teens and young adults

No one-size-fits-all solution

While public debates about social media and mental health often treat adolescents as a single demographic group, our results show a more complex reality. Problematic social media use is linked to poorer wellbeing across countries, but its effects are shaped by social realities. They vary depending on where young people live and what resources are available to them.

Not all teenagers experience the digital world in the same way, and not all are equally equipped to cope with its pressures. Recognising this is essential for designing policies that are not only effective, but also equitable, ensuring that interventions reach those adolescents who are most vulnerable to digital risks.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Roger Fernandez-Urbano receives funding from the Spanish Government’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency through Ramón y Cajal (RYC) grant. Roger is a member of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS).

Maria Rubio-Cabañez's involvement in this research was supported by the DIGINEQ (Digital Time Use, Adolescent Well-Being and Social Inequalities) project (Grant agreement ID: 101089233), funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

Pablo Gracia's involvement in this research was supported by the DIGINEQ (Digital Time Use, Adolescent Well-Being and Social Inequalities) project (Grant agreement ID: 101089233), funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

You are more empowered because you get to be seen for who you are.

These are the words of Link*, an online gamer with disability – one of a group of 15 gamers with disability we interviewed as part of our new study, published in the Journal of Disability and Social Justice.

Our study aimed to better understand what online gaming offers people with a disability. And Link’s experience highlights one of its key findings: online gaming acts as a powerful space of empowerment, largely due to participants having control over how they identify within online spaces.

A diversity of gaming experiences

Online gaming does have its problems. These include extremist gaming cultures, exploitative monetisation practices (including gambling-like features), and concerns about addiction.

But the prominence of these narratives can overshadow the diversity of gaming experiences, including the potential of online gaming to cultivate spaces for personal growth and development.

It can also allow people – especially those from marginalised groups – to creatively express their identity in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Taking a closer look

We wanted to take a closer look at this in our study by focusing on the empowering impact of online gaming for people with disability – and exploring whether such empowerment extends beyond the online space into other parts of everyday life.

To do this we interviewed 15 people (14 male, 1 female) online. The study focused on young adults aged between 18 and 35 who live with a disability.

The positive impacts of online gaming come from the opportunity online gaming provides to connect to a diversity of people online through shared interests. One of our interviewees, Cloud*, emphasises this point:

There is a lot of disabled-focused communities that have gaming channels and I think it’s great because it brings the community together.

Our research found that the positive influence of online gaming on people’s lives wasn’t just confined to the online space. As Link told us:

I think there can be that confidence boost, especially if you’re good at doing something particular in that game, I think it can give you that sort of translation to the real world.

So, people with disability can take that confidence from online gaming into their daily lives, which is impactful.

The anonymity offered in online spaces allowed participants to construct and express an identity with great control – where a space was created that highlighted other unique parts of their identity, rather than just their disability. As Mario* said:

You can create your own character and just be who you want to be.

This was echoed by Cloud:

Freedom to express yourself and do things that you wouldn’t be able to do in the real world […] You can do whatever you want, you can feel powerful.

These comments speak to the limitations people with disability experience in society while also demonstrating how powerful online gaming can be. They reiterate the importance of having agency around how you identify made possible through the anonymity that online gaming provides. As Cloud puts it:

[Online gaming] has allowed me to feel like I’m just a normal human being who can interact with anyone and be a part of a community.

A sense of expressing identity freely and confidently without feeling isolated and judged. Ultimately, that is empowering.

Playing without limitation

Notwithstanding the narratives of harm, it’s important that people with disability have full inclusion in the online gaming world in terms of access and adaptability, which includes accessible interfaces and devices.

However, it is important to note that accessible options can be quite costly, especially adaptive controllers.

Gaming is a permanent fixture in our lives. It can have profound benefits for people with disability by helping them construct their full identity. We should ensure people with disability can play without limitation and showcase their empowered selves.

*Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.