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Abstract
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Editorial on the Research Topic
New approaches to understand domestic violence and reduce its prevalence
Domestic violence is a major global problem encompassing distinct types of violence such as intimate partner violence (IPV), violence toward children and intra-family violence. The WHO estimates that about 30% of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence during their lifetime, mostly in the form of intimate partner violence (World Health Organization, 2021). Children can also be victims through witnessing IPV in their parents or even by experiencing direct violence against them.1 This Research Topic presents seven articles on this topic: four original research articles, two reviews, and one perspective. The focus of the articles ranges from the characteristics and recidivism of perpetrators, to the potential of different kinds of interventions for offenders and victims, to the impact of intimate partner violence on the victims and on their children.
Numerous countries have developed programs to reduce the recidivism of IPV perpetrators by focusing on different treatment options, even though no truly effective method has been found that works for all types of offenders (Eckhardt et al., 2013). Individualized approaches might thus be a promising option. Compatible with this idea are the findings from Askeland et al., who observed that men who voluntarily received individual psychotherapy for having committed violence against their female partner decreased their self-reported violence--partially confirmed by reports from the affected partners--from pre-treatment to post-treatment to 1.5 years after treatment. In addition, they found that more individual psychotherapy sessions decreased the likelihood of using physical violence against their partners and that clinical distress mostly declined throughout the course of psychotherapy...
Language: en |