Treatment Options for Victims of Domestic Violence

Treatment Options for Victims of Domestic Violence

University of Southern California

SOWK 562

Professor Carol Crabson

October 18, 2012

Domestic violence (DV) or intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. The violence can consist of the physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or psychological actions or threats of actions toward the intimate partner, which includes behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone (The United States Department of Justice, 2012).

Treatment options for victims of domestic violence vary for each victim. Many victims of domestic violence have co-occurring mental health problems, substance abuse problems, and sometimes both. The relationship amid an individual’s co-occurring problems and violent relationship are multi-directional and complex, issues the treatment used to help victims is based on his or her exposure to violence and abuse trauma and. The methods used to treat the men, women and children who have been subjected to physical, emotional and mental abuse are used based on the symptoms the victim exhibits. Domestic violence is a crime that can consist of physical, mental or emotional harm. While many cases have similarities, no one case is identical to another, making it increasingly difficult to pinpoint exact damages to the victims or what symptoms will exist.

Victims of violent crimes such as war crimes, rape and child sexual abuse have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines posttraumatic stress disorder as the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressors involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s...