Citation

Schacht RL, Dimidjian S, George WH, Berns SB. J. Marital Fam. Ther. 2009; 35(1): 47-59.

Affiliation

University of Washington.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1752-0606.2008.00095.x

PMID

19161583

Abstract

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.

Language: en