Men's explanations for intimate partner violence : how intimately violent men explain their violence, and how the explanations and their changes are related to treatment outcome in the Jyväskylä Model treatment group for intimately violent men

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the explanation models of intimately violent men according to treatment outcome in the Jyväskylä Model treatment groups. It was hypothesized, that the men who are able to reduce the use of intimate partner violence either initially explain their abusive behaviour differently or their explanation models change during the intervention, and thus differ from those of the men who do not reduce their abusive behaviour. The data of this study consisted of 32 videotaped or DVD-recorded 1.5 hour group intervention sessions from Jyväskylä Model treatment groups for intimately violent men. The explanation models of each of the four subjects were analysed from the four first and four last sessions they attended. The used method was functional analysis developed by Stephen Haynes. A Functional Analytic Clinical Case Model was drawn based on the explanations of each man. An additional source of information was the reports of the subjects’ spouses. The results of this study suggest that even though there were not significant differences in the content of the explanation models, those of the men who were not able to reduce their abusive behaviour were rather fixed and inflexible compared to others’. This result further supports a previous result, suggesting that the flexibility of explanation models may be an essential factor in reducing abuse. The contradictions in the reports of the subject and his spouse were immense in the group of men who did not reduce the use of intimate partner violence. Consequently it is extremely important that the authorities treating intimately violent men also have a lasting contact with the victim of intimate partner violence.