Abstract
Over two‐thirds of clients in family therapy clinics engage in some form of physical violence against their partners within the year prior to the initiation of therapy. However, family therapists are aware of only a small proportion of these cases. The purpose of this article is to enhance the ability of family therapists to detect marital violence. We examine client and therapist reasons for why physical violence is not detected. We then review various methods to screen for the presence of physical violence, especially the Conflict Tactics Scales. Finally, indicators of life‐threatening violence are presented to help family therapists detect cases that require immediate intervention to protect the partner whose life may be in danger.
Keywords
Intervention (counseling)Family therapyDomestic violencePsychologyPsychotherapistSuicide preventionMarital TherapyHuman factors and ergonomicsPoison controlInjury preventionClinical psychologyMedicinePsychiatryMedical emergency
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2)
This article describes a revised Conflict Tactics Scales (the CTS2) to measure psychological and physical attacks on a partner in a marital, cohabiting, or dating relationship; ...
The lntergenerational transmission of family violence: The long-term effects of aggressive behavior
This paper examines the contention that family violence is passed down from generation to generation. The sample was primarily nonclinical and was composed of 14 clients of comm...
Measuring Intrafamily Conflict and Violence: The Conflict Tactics (CT) Scales
Development of research on intrafamily and violence requires both conceptual clarity and measures of the concepts. The introduction to this paper therefore seeks to clarifj and...
Typologies of male batterers: Three subtypes and the differences among them.
Previous typologies of male batterers, including typologies developed by means of rational-deductive and empirical-inductive strategies, are reviewed. On the basis of this revie...
Statewide adoption and initial implementation of contingency management for substance-abusing adolescents.
Four hundred thirty-two public sector therapists attended a workshop in contingency management (CM) and were interviewed monthly for the following 6 months to assess their adopt...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1994
- Type
- review
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 425-439
- Citations
- 90
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
90
OpenAlex
Cite This
Etiony Aldarondo,
Murray A. Straus
(1994).
Screening for Physical Violence in Couple Therapy: Methodological, Practical, and Ethical Considerations.
Family Process
, 33
(4)
, 425-439.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.1994.00425.x
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1994.00425.x