In this review, we provide a descriptive and detailed review of intervention programs for intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators and survivor-victims. Given the extensive personal, interpersonal, and societal costs associated with IPV, it is essential that services being offered by the criminal justice, mental health, and medical communities have requisite empirical support to justify their implementation. The review involved a detailed summary of all studies published since 1990 using randomized or quasi-experimental designs that compared an active intervention program to a relevant comparison condition. These studies included 20 studies investigating the effectiveness of “traditional” forms of batterer intervention programs (BIPs) aimed at perpetrators of IPV, 10 studies that investigated the effectiveness of alternative formats of BIPs, 16 studies of brief intervention programs for IPV victim-survivors, and 15 studies of more extended intervention programs for IPV victim-survivors. Interventions for perpetrators showed equivocal results regarding their ability to lower the risk of IPV, and available studies had many methodological flaws. More recent investigations of novel programs with alternative content have shown promising results. Among interventions for victim-survivors of IPV, a range of therapeutic approaches have been shown to produce enhancements in emotional functioning, with the strongest support for cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches in reducing negative symptomatic effects of IPV. Supportive advocacy in community settings has been shown to reduce the frequency of revictimization relative to no-treatment controls, although rates of revictimization remain alarmingly high in these studies. Brief interventions for victim-survivors have had more complex and less consistently positive effects. Several studies have found significant increases in safety behaviors, but enhanced use of community resources is often not found. It remains unclear whether brief safety interventions produce longer term reduction in IPV revictimization. Discussion summarizes the general state of knowledge on interventions for IPV perpetrators and victim-survivors and important areas for future research.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a critical public health problem that requires clear and testable etiological models that may translate into effective interventions. While alcohol intoxication and a pattern of heavy alcohol consumption are robust correlates of IPV perpetration, there has been limited research that examines the mediating mechanisms of how alcohol potentiates IPV. We provide a theoretical and methodological framework for researchers to conceptualize how alcohol intoxication causes IPV, and propose innovative laboratory methods that directly test mediational mechanisms. We conclude by discussing how these innovations may lead to the development of interventions to prevent or reduce alcohol-related IPV.

Background Anger and problematic alcohol use have been established as individual risk factors for intimate partner violence (IPV) victimisation and perpetration, but it is unknown how these factors convey risk for IPV perpetration for men and women within the context of mutually violent relationships. Hypotheses Anger and problematic alcohol use were hypothesised to mediate the association between IPV victimisation and perpetration for men and women, with direct and indirect influences from partner variables. Methods Heterosexual couples (N = 215) at high-risk for IPV completed questionnaires indexing trait anger, problematic alcohol use and extent of past-year IPV perpetration and victimisation. An actor-partner interdependence modelling (APIM) framework was used to evaluate these cross-sectional data for two hypothesised models and one parsimonious alternative. Results The best-fitting model indicated that IPV victimisation showed the strongest direct effect on physical IPV perpetration for both men and women. For women, but not men, the indirect effect of IPV victimisation on physical IPV perpetration through anger approached significance. For men, but not women, the victimisation–perpetration indirect effect through problematic drinking approached significance. Implications for clinical practice The results suggest that anger and problem drinking patterns play different yet important roles for men and women in mutually violent relationships.

Intimate partner violence refers to verbal and physical aggression occurring between people who are, or were formerly, in an intimate relationship. Using the I 3 Model framework, we examined the interactive influences of negative urgency (i.e., the tendency to act rashly when in a bad mood), relationship quality, and cognitive reappraisal on hostile vocalizations in response to simulated romantic jealousy. Method We instructed 135 healthy male or female undergraduates in romantic relationships to use cognitive reappraisal or not. Participants then listened and verbally responded to jealousyprovoking dating scenarios while vocalizations were recorded. Results Results indicated that cognitive reappraisal attenuated the positive association between negative urgency and aggressive vocalizations, but only for couples in high quality relationships. Cognitive reappraisal also attenuated the negative association between relationship quality and vocalized negative affect in response to simulated romantic jealousy. Individual differences in negative urgency positively predicted vocalized negative affect and vocalized anger. Conclusions Cognitive reappraisal may attenuate the effect of aggressive impellors on intimate partner violence, but only when relationship quality is high. When relationship quality is low, cognitive reappraisal may not be effective.

This study examined implicit and explicit attitudes toward the use of violence and their capacity to predict past and future partner-directed aggression in a college dating sample. Implicit and explicit intimate partner violence (IPV) attitudes were measured and compared based on how well they identified self-reported past IPV and predicted expressed aggressive intent following a simulated dating scenario. Male and female participants (N = 106) completed self-report measures of IPV perpetration history and dating violence attitudes as well as an implicit association measure of violence attitudes. Participants were then randomly assigned to a simulated jealousy or neutral relationship scenario and subsequently indicated their desire to perpetrate physical aggression in response to it. The results indicated that implicit, but not explicit, violence attitudes predicted past-year physical IPV perpetration. Although implicit violence attitudes predicted laboratory aggression regardless of relationship provocation cues, the explicit violence attitudes only predicted aggression when relationship provocation was salient. These findings provide further evidence regarding the utility of an implicit attitudes measure in IPV risk assessment, suggest the need for additional research regarding their integration with self-report measures for predicting violence-related behavior, and have implications for investigations aimed at disrupting problematic violence attitudes.