Clear from Control→Evidence
A summary of the prevalence, presentation and clinical-mismatch evidence the pathway is built on.
Citations link to source - peer-reviewed where possible, with UK-specific data prioritised.
Last reviewed October 2026.
The UK government's Renewed Women's Health Strategy for England, published in April 2026, recognises domestic abuse as a women's health priority and commits to NHS-level screening for domestic abuse, including coercive control, by 2029.
"We will improve health and care for female victims of violence and abuse and ensure that whenever a victim or survivor contacts the NHS, they are met by a compassionate culture which treats them with care and dignity."
The strategy commits to identification and referral. It does not specify the specialist therapeutic practice required once survivors are referred. That is the gap this pathway closes, equipping practitioners with the stage-aware, risk-aware framework the strategy calls for in principle.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales finds 25.8% of adults aged 16+ - approximately 12.5 million people - have experienced domestic abuse since age 16. Past-year prevalence among women is 9.1%.
Multi-country WHO synthesis across 161 countries. The single largest analysis of violence-against-women prevalence to date. Underpins the case that intimate-partner violence is a global public-health issue, not a niche clinical one.
UK studies in adult mental-health settings consistently find substantially elevated rates of domestic abuse histories among service users, with disclosure increasing markedly when clinicians ask directly. Howard et al. found 30–60% lifetime prevalence in psychiatric in-patient populations; Oram et al. confirmed in systematic review.
Coercive control routes through contact, finances, legal systems, surveillance and parenting arrangements rather than ending at separation. Tutty, Radtke & Nixon's 2024 study of 346 women separated from abusive ex-partners reported 86% experiencing at least one ongoing coercive-control tactic post-separation.
Research with children and young people in the UK and Finland documents how perpetrators continue to exercise control through post-separation parenting arrangements, contact, and the children themselves. The clinical implication is that "post-separation" is often a misleading prefix where children are involved.
UK guidance from CIPD, the Employers' Initiative on Domestic Abuse (EIDA), TUC and SafeLives consistently identifies domestic abuse as a substantial workplace issue affecting attendance, performance, mental health, and safety. Workplace bullying complaints, performance issues, and exits sometimes overlap with coercive-control patterns at home - but the empirical mapping is clinical/qualitative, not statistical.
Most trauma-therapy training assumes the threat has ended and the narrative is recoverable. For roughly half the cases on a typical caseload, neither assumption holds. This pathway is a structured response to that gap.
It comes attached to the screening tool - designed to be filed alongside a case formulation.