Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Across The Lifespan

'This technical package represents a select group of strategies based on the best available evidence to help communities and states sharpen their focus on prevention activities with the greatest potential to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) and its consequences across the lifespan. These strategies include teaching safe and healthy relationship skills; engaging influential adults and peers; disrupting the developmental pathways toward IPV; creating protective environments; strengthening economic supports for families; and supporting survivors to increase safety and lessen harms.'

Globally, between 15-71 percent of women will experience physical and/or sexual abuse from an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime. Too often this preventable form of violence is repetitive in nature, occurring at multiple points across the lifespan. The prevalence of intimate partner violence is on the higher end of this spectrum in East Africa, with in-country demographic and health surveys indicating that approximately half of all women between the ages of 15-49 in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania having experienced physical or sexual abuse within a partnership. It is now widely accepted that preventing intimate partner violence is possible and can be achieved through a greater understanding of the problem; its risk and protective factors; and effective evidence-informed primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. To that end, on August 11-12, 2014, the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Global Violence Prevention, in a collaborative partnership with the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, convened a workshop focused on informing and creating synergies within a diverse community of researchers, health workers, and decision makers committed to promoting intimate partner violence-prevention efforts that are innovative, evidence-based, and crosscutting. This workshop brought together a variety of stakeholders and community workers from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania to engage in a meaningful, multidirectional dialogue regarding intimate partner violence in the region. Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

Annotation Schewe (researcher, U. of Illinois at Chicago) presents 10 contributions by psychologists describing interventions for use in preventing violence in intimate relationships and in families. Theory, research, and practice have been melded in discussion of school-based child sexual abuse prevention, child sexual abuse as a public health concern, children victimized by peers, dating violence education, self-protection strategies for rape avoidance, men's responsibility for preventing sexual assault, prevention of domestic violence, violence and the elderly population, and evaluating prevention programs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The most comprehensive research-based text on family violence – now more accessible and visually inviting than ever before Streamlined and updated throughout with state-of-the-art information, this Third Edition of the authors' bestselling book gives readers an accessible introduction to the methodology, etiology, prevalence, treatment, and prevention of family violence. Research from experts in the fields of psychology, sociology, criminology, and social welfare informs the book's broad coverage of current viewpoints and debates within the field. Organized chronologically, chapters cover child physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; abused and abusive adolescents; courtship violence and date rape; spouse abuse, battered women, and batterers; and elder abuse.

Evidence pertaining to continual violence throughout the life cycle coupled with the experience of growing old in a life permeated by intimate violence is scarce. And the focus is usually on the victims ─ usually, the older, battered women ─ and seldom on their aging partners or adult children who were part and parcel of the violent dynamics in the family system. With the increase in longevity and the older population’s subsequent growth in size, the number of elderly couples living and aging in long-lasting conflictive relationships is on the rise. The relatively intense preoccupation with elder abuse in the gerontological literature in recent years has not specifically addressed long-term intimate violence among the old adults and its lasting consequences. Similarly, the literature on intimate intergenerational relationships in old age has usually focused on normative exchanges between partners and their extended family, including their adult children. Therefore, conflictive relationships, and particularly violent ones, have also fallen outside the scope of this body of research. This volume describes and analyzes the various perspectives of family members concerning life, and particularly old age, in the shadow of long-term intimate violence. It explores how people make sense out of living and aging in violence, how interpersonal, familial and cross-generational relationships are perceived and reconstructed and how “we-ness” is achieved, if at all, in such families.

This book brings together an international collection of researchers and practitioners from a range of fields--including sociology, social work, psychology, law, public health and medicine, and victims services and advocacy--to examine promising, innovative strategies and programs for preventing intimate partner violence (IPV). The interdisciplinary contributions both discuss findings from evaluations of current IPV prevention programs and identify gaps in knowledge, paying particular attention to the needs of underserved groups like racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees, and members of LGBTQ communities. Among the many issues addressed are primary prevention programs that target adolescents and young adults, strategies specifically designed to engage men and boys in IPV prevention, IPV screening in various settings, the impact of the criminalization of IPV on minority populations, restorative justice programs, interventions for women who use violence, and innovative shelter programming to prevent revictimization. Uniting the major themes examined throughout the book, the concluding chapter delineates paths to more effective prevention strategies by highlighting ways that all stakeholders can work more effectively toward reducing violence.

In this book, contributing authors take a developmental approach to examining violence prevention in intimate relationships and families. Until recently, the study of violence prevention has focused on reducing the incidence of assaults by strangers, despite statistics that indicate people are twice as likely to be victimized by a friend, relative, or intimate partner. Authors view relationship violence not only as something that may be prevented at many points during the life span of a person, but also as something that must be prevented at key points, especially during childhood, if violence is to be reduced in the future. All violence is essentially interpersonal, so the contributors to this book focus on healthy interpersonal relationship skills as the basis for preventing violence. Each chapter covers relationship violence at a different stage of life and in different relationships, from child and partner abuse to rape and elder abuse. Authors provide empirical research results as well as practical guidance for day-to-day interventions in the lives of children and adults. The editor believes this book will be valuable to researchers interested in the field of violence prevention and practitioners working with the victims or perpetrators of violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).