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Domestic Violence Assessment Procedures Among Couple Therapists
Author(s) -
Schacht Rebecca L.,
Dimidjian Sona,
George William H.,
Berns Sara B.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of marital and family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.868
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1752-0606
pISSN - 0194-472X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2008.00095.x
Subject(s) - domestic violence , family therapy , modality (human–computer interaction) , medicine , clinical psychology , psychology , treatment modality , human factors and ergonomics , psychotherapist , poison control , family medicine , medical emergency , surgery , human–computer interaction , computer science
Guidelines for addressing domestic violence (DV) in couple therapy have been published, but reports of whether therapists routinely follow these suggestions are few. A national survey of 620 couple therapists randomly selected from American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy members was conducted in 2000 to assess therapists’ strategies for assessing DV and selecting a treatment modality when violence is discovered. Less than 4% of respondents indicated consistently following key published guidelines for DV screening (universal screening using separate interviews and questionnaires). A minority indicated that they consider the victim’s safety as a factor in treatment modality selection. DV may be under‐identified by couple therapists and therapists may be using conjoint therapy with couples for whom such therapy is contraindicated because of relationship violence.