Six percent of Netherlands residents experienced psychological violence last year

Around six percent of people up to 16 years of age have said that they suffered psychological violence from loved ones in the last year. This includes bullying, intimidation, or threats. Women were the victims slightly more often than men, with seven percent of women suffering from psychological violence compared to five percent of men. lgbtiqa+ also suffered psychological violence on a relatively higher scale.

Psychological violence is a form of domestic violence. Statistics Netherlands has said that this is often belittling, shouting, swearing, threatening to harm oneself or others, or deliberately breaking things.

The statistics agency did the study in collaboration with the Research and Data Centre (WODC). Over 25,000 people responded to a digital survey with questions about their experiences over the last 12 months.

It is the third time that the organizations have measured this in order to prevent domestic violence. The numbers are similar to the surveys from 2020 and 2022.

People who identified as non-binary or genderqueer suffered the relatively highest amount of psychological violence. Around 21 percent of them said that they have suffered from this in the last year. Homosexual and bi-plus women and men were also more often the victims of this. Heterosexual men deal with the least cases of psychological violence.

Young people noted in the survey that they deal with psychological violence more often than other age groups. Around 16 percent of the ages 16 to 18 reported this. This section of 18 to 24-year-olds that admitted to suffering from this in the last year was 12 percent. People aged 65 or older were the least likely to report psychological violence: 2 percent of them said they had recently been a victim of it.

Partners were most often the culprits of the behavior. Younger victims were often bullied or intimidated by their parents, brothers, or sisters.

Among the group of 35+, relatively many people indicated that their child was the perpetrator. About a third of the victims of psychological violence went to a care provider, such as a GP or a psychologist. In only 4 percent of the cases, someone had gone to the police.