Interviews Maryland psychologist Steven Stosny about marital abuse.
How Stosny got involved in marital abuse therapy; his approach to
batterers; Reason for the low dropout rate of his therapy program.
By
PT Staff, published on March 01, 1998
We put the safety of the victim first. We say, "We're sure you're
not going to be abused any more, but it's very unlikely you'll have a
good relationship with your abuser." We tell the women that there's more
to life than not being abused. And we have a higher separation rate than
the average. While 75 percent of women and children in shelters go back
to their husbands, out of 379 couples to go through our program so far,
46 percent of them have left their spouses.
How do you treat substance abusers?
We conduct our treatment simultaneously with substance abuse
treatment. Even though this hurts our treatment outcome--98 percent of
our recidivism is from alcohol and drugs- it's important because the
nervous system bounce makes a person more irritable when coming off a
drug, and I prefer they have some skills first.
Roland Maiuro, Ph.D. of the University of Washington has been
conducting a controlled study using the antidepressant Paxil to treat
abusers. Maiuro found that abusers had consistently low serotonin levels,
which were perhaps rendered even lower by their negative patterns of
behavior. Have you seen Prozac-like drugs work with batterers?
I always tell abusers to try antidepressants. Anything that
increases serotonin will reduce shame. And shame causes anger and
aggression. I'll bet money that when studies like Maiuro's come out, we
will see a significant reduction in violence. The problem is getting them
to take it.
They'll take any illicit drug, but they won't take Prozac. But
Prozac and HEALS will work best. It may even get the sociopaths.
How can we prevent domestic violence from happening in the first
place?
If you treat it in the early stages you can prevent murders from
happening. But you can't do this with a gender war. Community meetings
against domestic violence have one or two men, and few minorities. Saying
you're against domestic violence scares off people, and attracts the ones
who really believe in the battle of the sexes. By demonizing the
batterer, it makes him more isolated.
But if we make community organizations about being for the creation
of safe and secure families, they will have a much broader appeal.
Tags:
abandonment,
abusive behavior,
ambulances,
batterers,
child abuse,
domestic violence,
dropout rate,
feelings of guilt,
guilt shame,
men,
national dropout,
Steve Stosny,
treatment,
true power,
twit,
verbal and emotional abuse,
violent family
