Collection: Working with Domestic & Intimate Partner Violence

In Australia, 60 women were killed by men in 2022-2023 (more than one a week). Globally (in 2022), around 48,800 women and girls were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family (UN Women). Male victims of domestic violence – while rarer – are an often-overlooked population in this arena; 1 in 7 men will be the victim of domestic abuse in their lifetime.

Dr. Michael Acton, in his course, Coercive Control: Recognise, Manage Change, addresses the three parts of dealing with such violence: recognising when the coercive control that leads to violence is happening, helping a client accept that it is happening to them, and implementing strategies to change things. Similarly, this whole collection examines those three parts. Understanding and Working with Domestic Violence looks through feminist, psychological, and attachment lenses to understand violence and its effect on the abused, while tracing the cycle of violence. Carmel O’Brien’s Responding to Risk in Intimate Partner Violence helps you to understand critical aspects of client disclosure and warning signs that the violence may be occurring.

Getting the client to understand and accept that they are being subjected to coercive control/violence is a challenge, given the intense gaslighting, delusion, and throwing off-balance of the victim as detailed by both Dr. Acton and also Richard Hill in his course, The Unmanageable Traumatic Demand of Coercive Control. You come to understand why the three women in the course, Case Studies in Domestic Violence, were abused for years before they could escape.

The third critical element for health professionals, implementing strategies to help, is well detailed by both Carmel O’Brien in her espousal of a personalised safety plan, and by Beryl Armstrong in Intimate Partner Violence Solution-focused Trauma Care. Most domestic violence cases are men against women, but men are sometimes the victims of violence, which necessitates the need for population-specific considerations in recovery. Thus, the course, Working with Men in Distressed and Disrupted Intimate Partner Relationships, by Dr. Paul Sharp, addresses the practical skills needed by mental health professionals to engage men in these relationships (or recovering from these relationships) in therapy more effectively.