Behavioral Couples Therapy for Drug-Abusing Patients: Effects on Partner Violence

• NCJ Number: 196134
• Journal: Journal of Subtance Abuse Treatment Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: March 2002 Pages: 87-96
• Author(s): William Fals-Stewart Ph.D.; Todd B. Kashdan M.A.; Timothy J. O'Farrell Ph.D.; Gary R. Birchler Ph.D.
• Editor(s): A, Thomas McLellan Ph.D.
• Date Published: March 2002
• Length: 10 pages
• Grant Number(s): R01DA12189; R01DA14402
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research Paper
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article presents a comparison of Behavioral Couples Therapy and Individual-Based Treatment on domestic violence prevalence.

Abstract

The authors studied the impact of Behavioral Couples Therapy on the incidence of physical partner-violence. The article begins with a discussion of research detailing the link between alcoholism and substance abuse and domestic violence prevalence. Data for the present study were collected from the 1996 research of Fals-Stewart, Birchler, and O’Farrell. Partner violence was measured for 13 physical aggression measures, 9 of which were adapted from the Conflicts Tactics Scale. Measures were taken twice, first at the beginning of treatment and again one year after the completion of the assigned treatment program. Dyadic adjustment, frequency of heavy drinking, and frequency of drug use during the year after the treatment impacted the correlation between the different types of treatment and the prevalence of male-female partner violence. However, the couples assigned to Behavioral Couples Therapy reported a greater decrease in the incidence of partner violence in the year after treatment than did the couples referred to Individual-Based Treatment. 44 references