Over one-fifth of domestic violence survivors didn’t seek formal help during the COVID-19 pandemic due to reduced services at shelters or from fear of contracting the disease, a new study from the University of Michigan and Arizona State University found.

The study – which focused on women, transgender and nonbinary victims in Michigan – sought to uncover how the pandemic impacted survivors’ ability to obtain formal and informal support.

Services at domestic violence and sexual assault shelters were drastically altered in the pandemic’s wake, said Amanda Barratt, a program manager at the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, based in Okemos.

The nonprofit coalition of 73 agencies advocates for survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

With social distancing practices limiting how many people could share the same space, service providers had to reduce their in-person capacities, Barratt said.

Additionally, she said, several programs experienced staff turnover during the early stages of the pandemic – a problem that continues to affect shelters today, alongside insufficient funding.

Previous research showed that domestic violence incidents increased across the country during the initial months of the pandemic – with one estimate identifying an 8.1% jump after lockdown orders were imposed.

Some research suggests that the rise may have been caused by increased unemployment, greater stress associated with child care and heightened financial insecurity – all problems associated with domestic violence.

Restrictions on travel, combined with fewer opportunities to work outside the home, also meant victims were less likely to seek assistance from friends, neighbors or colleagues who could intervene and help them escape violent situations.

The pandemic also introduced a slew of challenges for shelters and advocacy groups, forcing them to shift how they work and limiting their capacity to serve clients.

The U-M and Arizona State study defined formal help as seeking police, medical, shelter or hotline assistance. It defined informal support as speaking to friends, family or other community members like a religious leader.

Fewer than one-third of the study’s participants who experienced domestic violence after the beginning of the pandemic reported seeking formal help.

In addition, 22% reported wanting to contact a domestic violence hotline or shelter but said they didn’t due to reduced services.

And another 22% said the fear of contracting COVID-19 kept them from seeing a health professional about the harm they experienced.

Nearly half – 48% – sought informal help.

Survivors with annual incomes over $40,000 were more likely to seek formal help than their poorer counterparts, according to the study published in the journal Violence Against Women.

Additionally, survivors who were white, pregnant or part-time workers were more likely to find formal help.

Those findings indicate that increased community outreach and specialized programming should be designed to target people at-risk who may underuse existing services, the researchers wrote.

“This is key to reducing disparities in intimate partner violence rates and lethality, which are among many increased stressors faced by racial, ethnic, gender and sexual minorities and lower-income individuals,” the study said.

Barratt, of the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, said one positive outcome of the pandemic was the introduction of virtual services, Barratt said.

Those online services help reach people who can’t physically go to a shelter, Barratt said.

At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, Shelterhouse – an advocacy and emergency shelter service based in Midland and with an office in Gladwin — opened a new facility with triple the capacity of its previous location.

Opening around that time makes it difficult to estimate how Shelterhouse was affected by service reductions, said Elizabeth Kennedy, the organization’s communication and outreach coordinator.

“Yes there was an increase (in clients),” Kennedy wrote in an email. “But there was also an increase in capacity to accept clients, so the data is skewed.”

Shelterhouse has seen a 35% increase in the number of hotline calls it receives in recent years — from 3,887 in 2019 to 5,261 in 2023.

Barratt noted that research into domestic violence incidents focuses heavily on physical forms of violence – a gap that may obscure the frequency of other forms of abuse, such as emotional and psychological abuse.

“We may never have data to show how greatly this impacted survivors,” she said.