Married girls have a higher risk for mental illness and are more likely to experience physical and sexual violence at the hands of their spouses as compared to unmarried ones.
Ĭhild marriage is associated with numerous health consequences. Girls younger than 15 or 16 years have increased risks of morbidity and mortality compared with older adolescents. Annually, approximately 70,000 maternal deaths in low and middle-income countries are associated with adolescent pregnancies. Globally, complications during pregnancy and childbirth is the second most common cause of death for adolescent girls. It should be noted that the great majority of those who get pregnant at an early age are married. Married girls are expected to get pregnant immediately after marriage and are at a higher risk of maternal and child morbidity and mortality, compared to women married at a later age. This indicates that Nepal has made progress in preventing child marriage, but there is still a long way to go before child marriage is eradicated. Among women 20 to 24 years old, 37% had married before they were 18 years old, and 10% of women from the same age range had married before they were 15 years old. In 2014, 52% of women in Nepal aged 20–49 years had married as children, and 17% of them married before the age of 15 years. Nepal ranks among the twenty countries in the world with the highest rates of child marriage. More youth-friendly health services and education about sexual and reproductive health should be key elements in the strategies to address the health issues of early-married women and adolescent girls.
Early-married women face a range of barriers against using existing health services including work overload, transport and distance to health care facilities, qualities of services, verbal abuse by health care providers, and shyness and embarrassment. We found that a combination of pressure to give birth early, limited autonomy, and little knowledge about reproductive health issues makes young married girls vulnerable to risky pregnancies. This qualitative study examines perceptions of health and use of health services among early-married women who had given birth. Child marriage is often associated with poor health among them and the newborns. Child marriage is still common in many countries, including in Nepal where approximately half of all women aged between 20 and 49 were married before they were 18 years old.
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