Motivational interviewing for perpetrators of intimate partner violence

(from the chapter) It is fairly well known that intimate partner violence (IPV) rarely occurs in isolation. Substance abuse, mental illness, financial issues, child abuse, and pet abuse often compound IPV, creating a complicated mix of problems. Unfortunately, currently used approaches to intervention with IPV offenders show little to no effect (e.g., Babcock, Green & Robie, 2004; Babcock & LaTaillade, 2000; Davis & Taylor, 1999; Jackson et al., 2003). Thus, new avenues of research and intervention need to be strongly pursued to address this serious public health concern. Among those potentially helpful approaches, it has been suggested that motivational interviewing may be an innovative move forward (Murphy & Baxter, 1997; Stuart, Temple & Moore, 2007), as it has shown to be effective in helping other "challenging" populations both want to change problematic behavior and actually make those changes (for reviews please see Burke, Arkowitz & Menchola, 2003; Burke, Dunn, Atkins & Phelps, 2004; Hettema, Steele & Miller, 2005; Rubak, Sandboek, Lauritzen & Christensen, 2005; Vasilaki, Hosier & Cox, 2006). The goal of this chapter, then, is to help family violence clinicians and researchers to move in that direction by examining how the motivational interviewing style can be useful when working with the IPV offender population (Murphy & Baxter, 1997; Stuart, Temple & Moore, 2007). To this end, a history of motivational interviewing with its empirical foundation and techniques is discussed, followed by a case example demonstrating application with an IPV offending client. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)