The Men's Domestic Abuse Check-up: Outcomes On Reaching and Engaging Abusive Men Prior to Arrest

Background and Purpose: Reaching and motivating intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators to self-refer into treatment is urgent due to continued high rates of violence in intimate relationships, low treatment self-referral rates among perpetrators, and high dropout rates in the small percentage of perpetrators who are in treatment. A successful brief intervention, Motivation Enhancement Therapy (MET) offers a potentially effective model for reaching abusive men and motivating them to seek and complete treatment.

This paper presents the primary outcomes from an initial evaluation of the Men's Domestic Abuse Check-up (MDACU), an early intervention with substance-using male perpetrators of IPV (In press, Research on Social Work Practice). We presented an earlier manuscript documenting marketing strategies to recruit the target population at the 2008 SSWR conference in Washington DC.

The purpose of this research was to preliminarily evaluate telephone-delivered MET with adult male perpetrators who were concurrently using alcohol and/or drugs, and were neither in counseling nor undergoing adjudication. The intervention's principal objective was to engage participants early and facilitate motivation for them to initiate changes in their IPV and/or substance abuse (SA). Similar early intervention/prevention models have not yet been tested in a randomized controlled trial with this target population, thus this research was designed to fill an important gap in the literature.

Methods: MDACU recruited 124 adult males who were engaging in IPV, using alcohol or other drugs, and who had no recent court or treatment involvement. Following a baseline assessment, participants were randomly assigned to one telephone MET session (experimental condition) or mailed educational information (comparison condition). Participants were then invited to attend an optional in-person learning session (OLS) to learn about local treatment options. Follow-up assessments took place 1-week and 30-days after the intervention.

Results: Overall, the MDACU attracted a demographically diverse community sample. The project's ability to reach and enroll this population is a significant finding in itself. At baseline, most participants (88%) were not taking steps toward IPV or SA treatment. Results supported the likely effectiveness of MET in short-term reduction of IPV behavior, increasing motivation for treatment seeking, and changing perceived norms for IPV and SA. As hypothesized, participants receiving the MET showed greater interest and willingness to change. The expected difference in the percentages of experimental and comparison condition participants who attended the OLS approached statistical significance. IPV frequency showed positive change among MET participants with a greater reduction in self-reported IPV, relative to participants in the comparison condition. Given the nature of the study sample and brevity of the intervention, these findings offer much hope for IPV behavior change in the short term.

Conclusions and Implications: This timely paper offers outcomes of an intervention that may provide a first step, low-burden, and effective option for reaching non-treatment seeking and un-adjudicated IPV perpetrators to self-refer into treatment. Given that IPV is typically addressed only after serious injury or death and criminal justice action, the intervention has the potential for interrupting violence in the home much earlier thus saving lives and averting social damage.