**5. Brief discussion of the reviewed articles**

Literally, all the reviewed articles engaged the discourse of confinement to the home environment to describe women's increased experience of gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic [12, 14, 27, 29–32]. In unison, all the seven articles (including other related reports) claimed that the safety protocol of lockdown imposed by government compelled men and women to spend longer period of time together at home, which heightened the incidences of gender-based violence. The popular argument is that the lockdown protocol has dual effect. On the one hand, it helped to control the rapid spread of the virus, by reducing the frequency of contracting the virus. But on the other hand, the limited mobility skyrocketed women's experience of gender-based violence as men and women were forced to spend long hours together resulting to greater experience of GBV. Hence, the dominate reality is that women encountered an increased experience of GBV during the COVID-19 lockdown, which could have a lasting effect on their mental well-being. Accordingly, what follows is a summary of the predominate themes that the reviewed articles surfaced, reflecting psychological abuse embedded in emotional/physical abuses, sexual abuse and economic abuse, which all put together impacted on women's mental health and well-being.
