Substance Use Disorders and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration among Male and Female Offenders

The current investigation sought to examine the direct associations and interactions among individual and concurrent alcohol, cocaine, cannabis, and opioid use diagnoses with the perpetration of intimate partner violence as well as to assess gender differences across these associations within a large forensic sample of male and female offenders.

Participants (1,290 male and 294 female) completed a court-mandated substance abuse evaluation during which they completed a clinical interview, either endorsing or denying recent physical partner violence perpetration. Specific substance use disorders were diagnosed based primarily upon responses to the clinical interview and were used to predict partner violence perpetration using logistic regression.

Alcohol and cocaine use disorders were significantly associated with IPV perpetration over the past year. Cannabis and opioid use disorders were not directly associated with IPV. A comorbid alcohol use diagnosis increased the likelihood of IPV perpetration among participants with either a cannabis or a cocaine use disorder while participants with an alcohol use disorder were less likely to be violent if they had also met criteria for a cannabis use disorder. These relationships held across males and females.

The current findings emphasize the importance of assessing associations between specific substances of abuse in researching and predicting partner violence and suggest that future efforts focus on the development of integrated treatments for co-occurring partner violence and substance use disorders.