Intimate Partner Violence, Emotional Dependency, And SelfEsteem In Women: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This article presents a systematic review of the relationship between intimate partner violence, emotional dependence, and self-esteem in women. The study adopts a qualitative approach and follows a systematic review methodology based on the PRISMA protocol (Page et al., 2021), ensuring transparency, rigor, and reproducibility in the selection and analysis of articles. Publications from 2020 to 2024 indexed in databases such as Scielo, Web of Science, and Scopus were included, with an initial total of 1,346 articles identified. After removing duplicates and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 13 articles were selected for the final analysis, enabling a detailed evaluation of the available literature on the topic. The study concludes that emotional dependence and low self-esteem are both predictors and consequences of intimate partner violence. The perspective of personal autonomy emerges as the most suitable framework to explain this phenomenon, highlighting the importance of factors such as self-confidence, self-efficacy, and self-respect in decision-making and the preservation of a sense of self. Emotional dependence manifests as a deficit in these capacities, increasing victims' vulnerability to the emotional manipulation of the abuser and perpetuating the cycle of violence.