Intimate Partner and Family Abuse

Family violence is a complex phenomenon. It is often reciprocal between the adult partners, and sometimes initiated by the children upon their parents and each another. Males and females, and parents and children can be perpetrators or victims in varying degrees. Over the past decade, many domestic violence experts have acknowledged the usefulness of couples and family therapy as an effective way to assess and treat family violence, while still ensuring the safety and accountability of all family members.This casebook showcases a wide variety of couples and families who have encountered violence, and the different therapeutic approaches used to treat them. The families discussed in these cases vary in their composition, geographic location, ethnic and socioeconomic status, and mental health issues. The case authors come from a wide range of fields, including social work, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and psychiatry. The approaches they use include cognitive-behavioral, family systems, feminist, problem-solving, and many others.What all these cases do have in common is that they demonstrate the complexity of assessing family violence and disentangling its multiple underlying causes. Each account includes a thorough description of the assessment procedure, treatment goals and reasons for selecting a particular approach (with a particular consideration of client safety), and an account of the course of treatment. Each study also ends with questions for discussion, making the cases perfect for use in a graduate course.The book is primarily intended for mental health professionals and graduate students in the fields of family therapy, counseling, and family violence; but will also be of value to anyone in the field of family violence and those concerned with domestic violence public policy, prevention, and intervention.It shows how to successfully conduct family interventions - based on real examples from practicing professionals. It includes male-perpetrated, female-perpetrated, and mutual violence scenarios. The illustrative cases come from a wide range of geographic, socioeconomic, and racial backgrounds. It presents a variety of theoretical orientations - cognitive-behavioral therapy, systems theory, problem-solving, attachment theory, and more. It includes discussion questions after each case study.