Improving Attendance and Treatment Completion among Men in Batterer's Education Programs

Intimate partner violence affects 1.6 million US women annually. Court-mandated interventions are standard sentences for convicted perpetrators, but treatment dropout rates are high: 40-60% of these men do not complete treatment. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether treatment content influences session attendance and treatment completion. The sample comprises 30 men who were court-mandated to Iowa’s 24-week Batterers Education Program and part of a larger clinical trial. Men were randomly assigned to either a novel intervention (called ACTV and based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles) or treatment-as-usual (a combination of Duluth and cognitive-behavioral interventions, the approaches currently mandated across the US). In Duluth and CBT models, the focus is on controlling the content of offenders’ thoughts. In ACTV, participants are taught that they have the freedom to choose their own behavior regardless of any thoughts they have at the time, and have time to practice changing their behavior. Additionally, existing programs are didactic or psycho-educational, whereas ACTV is guided by the advances of 3rd wave behavior therapies.  Data will be obtained from Iowa’s Department of Corrections, and completion will be defined according to Iowa’s standard of having attended at least 21 out of 24 sessions. It is hypothesized that men receiving the new intervention will be more likely to complete treatment and, on average, will attend more sessions than men receiving treatment-as-usual.