Review of the Association Between Treatment for Substance Misuse and Reductions in Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

A substantial body of research supports a strong cross-sectional and longitudinal association between substance misuse and perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). This article briefly addresses the theoretical connection between substance use and intimate partner violence and research on the association between substance misuse and IPV. Studies examining the effect of individual and couples-based addiction treatments on IPV are reviewed. The implications of this work and future directions for research are discussed.

Keywords:

• intimate partner violence
• substance misuse
• treatment
• behavioral couples therapy

Notes

¹The reader is referred to Hill's criteria for causation, which were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes, or merely associated.

²Treatment can be briefly and usefully defined as a planned, goal-directed, temporally structured change process of necessary quality, appropriateness, and conditions (endogenous and exogenous), which is bounded (culture, place, time, etc.) and can be categorized into professional-based, tradition-based, mutual-help-based (AA, NA, etc.), and self-help (“natural recovery”) models. There are no unique models or techniques used with substance users—of whatever types and heterogeneities—which aren't also used with non-substance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideology of “harm reduction” and even the newer quality of life (QOL) treatment-driven model, there is now a new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence driven models.

³There is a need to distinguish between pharmacological action and one's “drug experience,” which is the outcome of the complex interactions between the chemically active substance, the user, and where it is being used, or site.

⁴The reader is reminded that concepts representing processes, such as “risk” and “protective factors” are often used in the literature without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, nonlinear), their “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenous as well as exogenous from a micro to a macro level) which are necessary for either of these posited processes to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual, and/or systemic stake holder-bound, based upon “principles of faith” etc.). Editor's notes.