The role of drug use in a conceptual model of intimate partner violence in men and women arrested for domestic violence.

In a previous study, alcohol problems in perpetrators and their partners contributed directly and indirectly to intimate partner violence (IPV), even after including other correlates of violence in the model (G. L. Stuart et al., 2006). The present study extends these findings by examining the role of illicit drug use. We recruited 271 men and 135 women arrested for IPV and used structural equation modeling to examine the data. Results showed that drug use, as reported by the perpetrators, was a stronger predictor of IPV than were alcohol problems in perpetrators and their partners. Arrested males' marijuana use and stimulant use (i.e., cocaine and amphetamines) were associated with perpetration of IPV, and their report of their female partners' stimulant use was associated with her violence perpetration. In arrested women, specific substances used did not predict violence perpetration beyond other model variables; however, female perpetrators' report of male partners' stimulant use predicted male psychological and physical aggression, after controlling for other variables. These results provide further evidence that drug problems by both partners may be important in the evolution of aggression. Implications for batterer intervention programs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical aggression toward boys and girls in families characterized by the battering of women.

Forty-eight families (mothers and children) participated in a study on physical aggression toward boys and girls in households characterized by the battering of women. In each family, the mother had sought shelter because of relationship violence and had a son and daughter between 4 and 14 years. Mothers completed measures of physical marital violence directed at themselves, aggression toward children, and children's externalizing behavior problems. Older children completed measures of aggression directed at themselves. Results indicated that child gender moderates the relationship between the battering of women and aggression toward children. In families characterized by "more extreme" battering, boys were more often victims of aggression than girls, boys exhibited more externalizing problems than girls, and gender differences in externalizing problems helped account for the differential aggression directed at boys and girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interventions for intimate partner violence: Review and implications for evidence-based practice.

The objective of this article was to survey available intimate partner violence (IPV) treatment studies with (a) randomized case assignment, and (b) at least 20 participants per group. Studies were classified into 4 categories according to primary treatment focus: perpetrator, victim, couples, or child-witness interventions. The results suggest that extant interventions have limited effect on repeat violence, with most treatments reporting minimal benefit above arrest alone. There is a lack of research evidence for the effectiveness of the most common treatments provided for victims and perpetrators of IPV, including the Duluth model for perpetrators and shelter–advocacy approaches for victims. Rates of recidivism in most perpetrator- and partner-focused treatments are approximately 30% within 6 months, regardless of intervention strategy used. Couples treatment approaches that simultaneously address problems with substance abuse and aggression yield the lowest recidivism rates, and manualized child trauma treatments are effective in reducing child symptoms secondary to IPV. This review shows the benefit of integrating empirically validated substance abuse and trauma treatments into IPV interventions and highlights the need for more work in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mediating role of parenting stress in the relation between intimate partner violence and child adjustment.

This study examined the role of maternal parenting stress in the relation between intimate partner violence (IPV) and children's emotional and behavioral problems among 139 African American children between the ages of 8 and 12 years. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate a mediational model examining maternal reports of IPV and parenting stress and both mother and child reports of child adjustment. Results suggest that parenting stress helps explain the link between IPV and child emotional and behavioral problems. Findings from this study highlight the importance of parenting stress in outcomes of children from low-income African American families who experience IPV. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intimate partner violence and preschoolers' explicit memory functioning.

This research examines whether parents' intimate partner physical violence (IPV) relates to their preschoolers' explicit memory functioning, whether children's symptoms of hyperarousal mediate this relation, and whether mothers' positive parenting moderates this relation. Participants were 69 mothers and their 4- or 5-year-old child (34 girls). Mothers completed measures of IPV, children's hyperarousal symptoms, parent-child aggression, and positive parenting. Measures of explicit memory functioning were administered to preschoolers. As expected, IPV correlated negatively with preschoolers' performance on explicit memory tasks, even after controlling for parent-child aggression and demographic variables related to preschoolers' memory functioning. Preschoolers' hyperarousal symptoms did not mediate the relation between IPV and explicit memory functioning, but mothers' positive parenting moderated this relation. Specifically, the negative relation between IPV and preschoolers' performance on 2 of the 3 explicit memory tasks was weaker when mothers engaged in higher levels of positive parenting. These findings extend research on IPV and children's adjustment difficulties to explicit memory functioning in preschoolers and suggest that mothers can ameliorate the influence of IPV on preschoolers' memory functioning via their parenting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting the Intentions of Women in Domestic Violence Shelters to Return to Partners: Does Forgiveness Play a Role?

Recent findings indicate that college women's forgiveness of hypothetical dating violence was predictive of their hypothetical decisions to stay in the relationship. This study was designed to evaluate the role of forgiveness in women's intentions to return to their partners from a domestic violence shelter. A sample of 121 women residing in both urban and rural domestic violence shelters filled out a series of questionnaires evaluating demographic information, severity of violence, attributions for violence, psychological constraints (or investment), and forgiveness of the partner. Forgiveness was found to predict intention to return to partner over and above the other variables studied. These findings suggest that the degree to which women are willing to "move on" from the abuse and to let go of their anger toward their partners may play a significant role in their intention to remain in a relationship with their partners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child maltreatment polyvictimization: Rates and short-term effects on adjustment in a representative Hong Kong sample.

Objective: This article examines the unique effects of multiple forms of victimization, namely child abuse and neglect (CAN) and exposure to parental intimate partner violence (IPV), on children's self-blame, feelings of being threatened, self-esteem, and ability to control anger. Method: The cross-sectional study recruited a population-based sample of 2,062 children aged 12–17 years in Hong Kong. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the children. The prevalence rate of the co-occurrence of exposure to IPV and CAN in the Chinese population, and the unique impacts of exposure to IPV and CAN on children were examined. Results: The results show that 13.1% of the children had experienced CAN, and 6.5% had witnessed parental IPV. Among those families characterized by IPV, 61.1% were involved in child abuse in the preceding year of the study. Participants who had experienced both CAN and exposure to parental IPV reported lower levels of self-esteem and higher rates of being aggressive and violent, and feeling threatened. These children also reported the highest levels of feeling that their well-being was threatened and of blaming themselves for parental violence and parental discipline. Conclusions: The findings reemphasize the important need for public policy on child and youth victimization that encourages social workers and Child Protective Services to screen for child polyvictimization in cases of suspected/reported child abuse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Violence conjugale et qualité de la relation mère-enfant: Effet médiateur ou modérateur de la santé des mères ?

Mothers' health and quality of mother–child relationship are often held as factors that predict the adaptation of children exposed to domestic violence, but the connection between these factors has not been analysed yet. This study verifies if mothers' health has a mediator or a moderator effect on the connection between domestic violence and mother–child relationship. The study was conducted with 111 abused women and their children aged 6 to 12 years. An indicator of physical health and a score of psychological distress were used to measure mothers' health. The mother–child relationship was evaluated from both the mother's and the child's perspective. The results show that the 2 indicators of mother's health have no mediator effect, but have a moderator effect when the mother–child relationship was evaluated by children themselves. The discussion underlines the importance of mother's health as a protective factor for mother–child relationship and the incidence of this result for intervention. The interest of having multiple informants is also underlined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing conduct problems among children of battered women.

This study was an experimental evaluation of an intervention designed to reduce conduct problems among children of battered women. Participants were 36 families (mothers and children) in which the mother had sought shelter because of relationship violence and had at least 1 child (4-9 years old) with clinical levels of conduct problems. The intervention consisted of 2 primary components: (a) providing instrumental and emotional support and (b) teaching child management skills to mothers. Families were randomly assigned to either the intervention condition or the existing services comparison condition and were assessed on 5 occasions over 16 months after shelter departure. Compared with families receiving existing services, children in the intervention condition improved at a faster rate, the proportion of children displaying clinical levels of conduct problems was greatly diminished, and mothers displayed greater improvements in child management skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The complexities of domestic violence.

Comments on the article by Robert Bornstein, "The complex relationship between dependency and domestic violence: Converging psychological factors and social forces," (see record 2006-11202-003). Although a more focused examination of the psychological factors involved in domestic violence is welcome, there are some factual errors in Bornstein's article that need attention and represent a general problem in reports of domestic violence. Bornstein wrote, "Studies indicate that more than 95% of abuse perpetrators are men" (p. 595) and then proceeded to assess dependency in male perpetrators and female victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study indicating that more than 95% of IPV perpetrators are men was not cited and is, in fact, fictitious. The best empirical evidence indicates an entirely different finding. Clinical predictions of dangerousness made in psychiatric emergency rooms often underestimate female dangerousness. Risk of harm to children has often been based on wife abuse-child abuse incidence co-occurrence estimates from shelter house samples of women and erroneously generalized to community samples. For these reasons, regeneration of the gender paradigm by Bornstein, or others, serves to misinform the profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing conduct problems among children brought to women's shelters: Intervention effects 24 months following termination of services.

This study evaluated the long-term effects of Project SUPPORT, an intervention designed to reduce conduct problems among children in domestically violent families. Participating mothers had sought shelter because of domestic violence and had at least one child (4-9 years old) exhibiting clinical levels of conduct problems. Results indicated that at 2 years posttreatment, 15% of children in families in the Project SUPPORT condition exhibited clinical levels of conduct problems compared with 53% of those in the existing services condition. In addition, mothers of children in the Project SUPPORT condition reported their children to be happier, to have better social relationships, and to have lower levels of internalizing problems, relative to children in the comparison condition. Mothers in the Project SUPPORT condition were less likely to use aggressive child management strategies and were less likely to have returned to their partners during the follow-up period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intimate partner violence moderates the association between mother–infant adrenocortical activity across an emotional challenge.

This study examined the relationship between mother and infant adrenocortical levels and reactivity to an emotion eliciting task. The impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on these relationships was assessed as a moderator. The sample (n = 702 mother–infant dyads) was racially diverse and from predominantly low-income, rural communities. During a home visit, the dyad’s saliva was sampled before, 20 min, and 40 min after standardized tasks designed to elicit the infant’s emotional arousal and later assayed for cortisol. Mothers completed self-report measures of their partner’s violence, and parenting behaviors were assessed via structured interview and mother–child interactions. In response to the task, infants had positive, and mothers had negative, cortisol slopes. Contrary to expectations, there were no IPV-related differences in mean pretask cortisol levels or reactivity in the mothers or infants. Mother–infant dyads from households characterized by either (1) violence or (2) restrictive and punitive parenting behaviors exhibited correlated cortisol reactivity measured in response to the infant challenge task. The findings suggest that social contextual features of the early caregiving environment may influence individual differences in the coordination between maternal and infant adrenocortical reactivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Partner aggression and children's externalizing problems: Maternal and partner warmth as protective factors.

This research examined maternal and partner warmth as moderators of the relation between men's intimate partner aggression and children's externalizing problems. Participants were 157 mothers and their children (ages 7-9 years). Results indicate that maternal and partner warmth each moderated the relation between men's intimate partner aggression and children's externalizing problems. Partner-to-mother aggression was positively associated with child reports of externalizing problems at lower, but not higher, levels of maternal warmth. Similarly, partner-to-mother aggression was positively associated with mother reports of girls', but not boys', externalizing problems at lower, but not higher, levels of maternal warmth. On the other hand, the moderating effect of partner warmth was in the opposite direction and was found only with child-reported externalizing problems. Increased levels of partner-to-mother aggression related positively to child-reported externalizing problems when partners were higher, but not lower, in warmth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intimate partner violence among female sex workers in two Mexico–U.S. Border cities: Partner characteristics and HIV risk behaviors as correlates of abuse.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has been associated with greater vulnerability to HIV infection among women. We examined prevalence and correlates of IPV among female sex workers (FSWs) in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, two large Mexico–U.S. border cities in which HIV prevalence is rising. Participants were 300 FSWs with a current spouse or a steady partner. Participants' mean age was 33 years, and mean number of years as a sex worker was 6. The prevalence of IPV in the past 6 months among participants was 35%. Using multivariate logistic regression, factors independently associated with IPV included having experienced abuse as a child, a partner who had sex with someone else, and lower sexual relationship power. Our findings suggest the need for previous abuse screening and violence prevention services for FSWs in the Mexico–U.S. border region. Careful consideration of relationship dynamics such as infidelity and relationship power is warranted when assessing for IPV risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing conduct problems among children exposed to intimate partner violence: A randomized clinical trial examining effects of Project Support.

This study was a randomized clinical trial of Project Support, an intervention designed to reduce conduct problems among children exposed to intimate partner violence. Participants were 66 families (mothers and children) with at least 1 child exhibiting clinical levels of conduct problems. Families were recruited from domestic violence shelters. The Project Support intervention involves (a) teaching mothers child management skills and (b) providing instrumental and emotional support to mothers. Families were randomly assigned to the Project Support intervention condition or to an existing services comparison condition. They were assessed on 6 occasions over 20 months, following their departure from the shelter. Children in families in the Project Support condition, compared with those in the comparison condition, exhibited greater reductions in conduct problems. Mothers in the Project Support condition, compared with those in the comparison condition, displayed greater reductions in inconsistent and harsh parenting behaviors and psychiatric symptoms. Changes in mothers’ parenting and psychiatric symptoms accounted for a sizable proportion of Project Support’s effects on child conduct problems at the end of treatment. Clinical and policy implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Occurrence of Male-to-Female Intimate Partner Violence on Days of Men's Drinking: The Moderating Effects of Antisocial Personality Disorder.

In this study, the moderating effects of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) on the day-to-day relationship between male partner alcohol consumption and male-to-female intimate partner violence (IPV) for men entering a domestic violence treatment program (n = 170) or an alcoholism treatment program (n = 169) were examined. For both samples, alcohol consumption was associated with an increased likelihood of nonsevere IPV among men without a diagnosis of ASPD but not among men with ASPD (who tended to engage in nonsevere IPV whether they did or did not drink). Drinking was more strongly associated with a likelihood of severe IPV among men with ASPD compared with those without ASPD who also drank. These results provide partial support for a multiple threshold model of intoxication and aggression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prevalences of intimate partner violence in a representative U.S. Air Force sample.

Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious health concern, but little is known about prevalence of IPV in the armed forces, as military members cope with the pressures of long-standing operations. Furthermore, previous prevalence studies have been plagued by definitional issues; most studies have focused on acts of aggression without consideration of impact (clinically significant [CS] IPV). This is the first large-scale study to examine prevalences of IPV, CS-IPV, and clinically significant emotional abuse (CS-EA) for men and women. Method: A United States Air Force-wide anonymous survey was administered across 82 bases in 2006 (N = 42,744) to assess IPV, CS-IPV, and CS-EA. Results: The adjusted prevalence of CS-IPV perpetration was 4.66% for men and 3.54% for women. Prevalences of IPV perpetration were 12.90% for men and 15.14% for women. CS-EA victimization was 6.00% for men and 8.50% for women. Sociodemographic differences in risk for violence were found for gender, race/ethnicity, pay grade, religious faith, marital status, and career type even after controlling for other demographic variables. Conclusions: Partner maltreatment is widespread in military (and civilian) samples. Men were more likely to perpetrate CS-IPV, whereas women were more likely to perpetrate IPV. Specific demographic risk factors were identified for different types of partner maltreatment (e.g., lower rank predicted higher risk for both perpetration and victimization across men and women). Other sociodemographic differences varied across severity (IPV vs. CS-IPV) and across gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making sense of family conflict: Intimate partner violence and preschoolers’ externalizing problems.

This research examines relations among parental intimate partner violence (IPV), preschoolers’ narrative coherence about family conflict situations, and preschoolers’ externalizing problems. Participants were 57 mothers and their 4- to 5-year-old children. Mothers provided data on IPV and children’s externalizing problems. Narrative coherence was coded from children’s play narratives in response to story stems from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. Results are consistent with theory suggesting that exposure to IPV may adversely affect preschoolers’ ability to understand family conflict situations in an organized manner, which in turn may contribute to their externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychometric properties of family members' reports of parental physical aggression toward clinic-referred children.

This study examined (a) differences among mothers', fathers', and children's reports of parental physical aggression toward children; (b) the reliability and validity of family members' reports of aggression using confirmatory factor analysis; and (c) the discriminant validity of the construct of mother–child and father–child aggression. Participants were 72 dual-parent families in which the parents were seeking clinical services for their children's (ages 7–9 years) conduct behavior problems. Each participant completed the parent–child version of the Conflict Tactics Scale (P-CTS). Results indicate that children reported lower levels of mother–child and father–child aggression than either mothers or fathers reported. Although the reliability (total systematic variance accounted for by observed variables) of family members' reports on the P-CTS ranged from moderate to high, convergent validity was generally low. The constructs of mother–child and father–child aggression were highly correlated but could be distinguished from each other when relationships among rater effects were considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)