First Review of The Physician’s Guide to Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse

Volcano Press has notified Pat Salber, MD, and myself that the first pre-publication review of our book is now available (11 Domestic Violence Report 21, Dec/Jan. 2006.) The review is printed here with permission from the author. Note that you can subscribe to the "Domestic Violence Report" by calling 609-683-4450.

The Physician’s Guide to Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse

A Review by Joan Zorza, Esq.

Domestic Violence Report

Ten years ago two physicians, Patricia R. Salber and Ellen Taliaferro, wrote a book for doctors on domestic violence, a book that was then state of the art.  Just how much has changed is clear from their completely revised update of the book, The Physician’s Guide to Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse: A Reference for all Health Care Professionals:  How to Ask the Right Questions and Recognize Abuse … another way to save a life.  Like its predecessor, it is published by Volcano Press (www.volcanopress.com), but it is so much more expanded in every way that it is hard to compare the two books.  Not only is it far longer, but it is printed as a much larger size book (with correspondingly more information on each page), so that comparing the number of pages is not comparable.  Its size also makes it easier to read.  As before tables and checklists make the material far easier to comprehend and remember.  It is far better organized, and also covers far more material and implications of what physicians and other health care providers deal with. 

This is just an excellent book that every hospital, medical school, nursing school, dental school, social work school and other health care facility should know about and have in its library.  Students should be encouraged to read the book, or it should be assigned for courses or continuing education courses in intimate partner abuse.  The very name change from domestic violence to intimate partner shows how much more we need to be aware of the problem among partners who are not married to each other and among same-sex couples. Some of the chapters were written by only one of the authors, others by both, and some by guest contributors.  It does occasionally make for a bit of duplication, but overall the book has very little duplication, considering that different people often wrote different chapters. 

Besides debunking all of the myths, many cutting edge issues are tackled (e.g., to what extent do batterers have pathology and what the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study is showing about how 10 categories of traumatic childhood experiences impact the neurodevelopment of these individuals throughout life. Briefly, childhood exposure to traumas of all sorts makes them far more likely to abuse substances; have earlier intercourse, greater promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases; more teen and unintended pregnancies, stillbirths and spontaneous abortions; poor worker performance; more mental health problems; and more heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, obesity and other conditions making them more vulnerable to early death. Being sexually abused, physically abused or seeing one’s mother battered increased the risk considerably that a female would become a victim or a male a perpetrator of intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA), and the greater the number of these childhood experiences the greater the risk (two factors increased both sexes chance by 230% and three by 280%).   Indeed, all of the adverse reactions greatly increased based on the more adverse experiences that children had. 

The seven year study at Kaiser Permanente also found that patients and doctors responded far better when patients were given a paper or Internet-based questionnaire to fill out at home before the visit than with the traditional screening questions.  Health care providers found it much easier to ask follow up questions after seeing the responses done at home than to question people initially in person (e.g., “I see that you frequently were beaten as a child (molested as a child, are living in a violent household, etc.).  Tell me how that has affected you in your life.”).  Both providers and patients found it much easier (and cheaper) to use autobiographical writing as a next therapeutic step, and both the home questionnaire and the autobiographical writing were more appreciated across race lines.  Recognizing that the various disorders are overlapping conditions and that when they occur, treating the psychiatric and physical disorders as overlapping conditions is far more effective than treating them separately in their traditional setting.

In an appendix the Family Justice Center concept (see Dreaming Big: Creating Family Justice Centers Across America, Parts I and II by Casey Gwinn, 10 DVR 1 (2004) and 10 DVR 17 (2005)) is discussed and its advantages from a health perspective are emphasized. Jacquelyn Campbell’s latest risk assessment tool is also included in an appendix, as is how to download it for free from the Internet. 

Paper copies of this excellent and informative manual, The Physician’s Guide to Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse: A Reference for all Health Care Professionals, cost $34.95 and will soon be available from Volcano Press, 800 879.9636 or go to www.volcanopress.com.

To learn more about Joan Zorza, JD please visit her website at www.zorza.net.

Comments

[clara asuncion]

Intimacy violence is often used by women against battering husbands and all talk without documentation should not be entertained by the courts at all.