Treatment Needs of Men and Women with Violence Problems In Substance Use Disorder Treatment

Abstract

This study examined treatment needs of men and women in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. The sample (n = 489) was recruited between 2006 and 2007 from a Midwestern state in the United States, and participants were grouped based on injury occurring in partner and nonpartner relationships in the past year. Rates of injury across relationship types were alarming with over 54.8% reporting injuring another person and 55.4% reporting being injured. Overall, those injuring nonpartners or both partners/nonpartners had more severe problems. Implications of the findings for SUD treatment settings and a model for integrated violence prevention are discussed.

Keywords:

• aggression
• injury
• alcohol
• drugs
• treatment
• subtypes
• problem-service matching
• best practices

Notes

¹Treatment 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-, tradition-, and 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 nonsubstance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideology of “harm reduction” and the even newer quality of life (QOL) treatment-driven model there are now a new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence-driven models. Editor's note.

²The reader is asked to consider that in order for the posited concept and process of “risk factors”—a concept, often noted in the literature—to be useable, that there is the need to adequately understand its dimensions (linear, nonlinear), its “demands;” the critical necessary conditions (endogenous as well as exogenous; micro to macro levels) which are necessary for it to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether its underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically-based, individual and/or systemic stakeholder-bound, based upon “principles of faith,” a conventional wisdom, etc. Editor's note.

³The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

⁴The reader is referred to Hills's criteria, 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. Editor's note