Title: Mental distress and associated factors among women who experienced gender based
violence and attending court in South Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study
Version: 1 Date: 18 Mar 2022
Reviewer's report:
The study is intended to address one of the major health problems in Ethiopia that is mental
distress. Having said this, I do have a number of comments and suggestions to be addressed if
possible.
General comment: The document needs chief language revision.
Abstract
1. Conclusion: The prevalence of mental distress is high as compared with most of the previous
findings vs. no pervious study for sample size calculation.
Introduction
1. The paragraphs are short, and the information included in this section is not articulate (from
global to Local). Therefore, this section should be rewritten in a focused, informative, and
articulate manner that can indicate the magnitude, and determinants of the research topic. I do
have issues about “attending court…’
2. First please place full name of the word, then authors can use abbreviations for example GBV?
3. Please provide the difference b/n mental distress and mental illness? And which is appropriate
for this study?
4. This literature is/are not supported in Authors findings….52.5% anxiety disorders,
47.1%mood disorder, 56.2% substance use disorder and 34.7% suicide attempts
5. In the last paragraph. Do authors think that this conclusion, objective, and topic are in line
with each other? Please provide/add literatures related to court?
Methods and materials
1. I do have concern of data collection period January 1-March 30 /2021? How did you manage
lockdown strategies and data collection? When was the time lockdown activities were done in
Ethiopia?
2. Authors, how they were knew, women were faced GBV?
3. Authors how did they relate the following sentences. … through face-to-face interviews and
…. All women were individually asked to answer the questionnaires in selected interview rooms
4. What significant did Authors have gate? Where, how and in how many of them pre-test was
done?
5. What does it mean “P-value of 0.05 or lower” or is it stastically correct?
6. Authors think that, if they were seriously ill, how they could be come to the court?
7. Authors are required to provide the reasons why 13(see result description)? Contextual we
agreed on age greater than 18 years old is Adult.  Please your inclusion and exclusion criteria? If
authors were address age lower than 18 years did have used assent form? Plus, in table 1 variable
age classification is not clear.
8. Authors are required to provide a single and the double population proportion formula with
its results for the issue of Feasibility?
9. Authors are required to provide how the constructive sampling method was used? And why
was not the study triangulated (QUN +QUAL)?
10. How wealth index/monthly income/ was categorized based on the result of ETB (i.e. above
and below the given number)? How it could be a monthly income in ETB both for urban and
rural?
11. All components of methods and materials were not incorporated? Typical an operational
definition of the terms…alcohol, chat, substance, PTDS, social support, etc
12. Statically, analysis of the study is not clear? “After controling potental variables” and table
2 is incongruent. B/c no variables were left in AOR