In Battered Women and Sleeping Abusers: Some Reflections, Professor Joshua Dressler offers cogent criticism of the application of self-defense to battered women who kill their abusers under “nonconfrontational” circumstances, such as when the abuser is asleep. Dressler is critical of using evidence that the defendant suffered from “Battered Woman Syndrome” (“BWS”) to establish the requisite def...

Four facets of leaving an abusive relationship are reviewed: (a). factors related to initially leaving an abusive partner; (b). the process of leaving an abusive relationship; (c). the psychological well-being of survivors after leaving; and (d). the predictors of this well-being. The conceptual and methodological limitations of studies in each of these areas are presented. Consistently found p...

An online experiment was conducted among a convenience sample of college students (N = 219) to explore the effects of narrative perspectives (first-person vs. third-person) and gender similarity to a victim on sympathy and support for aid to people in need. To be specific, the study examined the influence of telling a story of an abused woman from a first-person perspective as opposed to a thir...

OBJECTIVE To examine prevalence rates and psychosocial correlates of clonidine use in a sample of opiate-dependent pregnant women. METHODS Clonidine use was assessed in 90 treatment-seeking, pregnant, opiate-abusing women using both self-report and urinalysis toxicology. Clonidine-positive and -negative subjects were compared for selected demographic, substance use, and psychosocial measures....

BACKGROUND Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women can result in serious health problems. The objectives of this study are to analyse the association between the different types of IPV and women's physical health, and to examine whether this association varies depending on the intensity, duration and timing of the violence. METHODS A sample of 1402 randomly selected women attending 23 f...

BACKGROUND Intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with poorer health, yet pathways through which IPV affects either mental or physical health are not well characterized. METHODS Structural equation modeling was used to test a model in which physical-IPV and battering were considered as separate independent variables. The sample included 191 women currently experiencing either physical ...

Greater training and specialization in working with children exposed to domestic violence has resulted in new policies, interagency protocols, and legislation in many states. This paper examines court-related responses in criminal, child protection, and family court custody proceedings, which highlight legislative changes and resulting systemic change. Although this legislation originated with ...

This article incorporates a cognitive problem-solving intervention model in a case report of a chronically abused woman from Roberts’ continuum of the extent and chronicity level of women battering. It depicts Prochaska and DiClemente’s stages of change and Roberts’ crisis intervention model in the progressive movement from living in a battering situation to leaving the relationship and becomin...

BACKGROUND Chronic and inescapable trauma is implicated in the stress-induced analgesia (SIA) response. METHODS A sample of 27 chronically battered women was compared with 28 trauma-exposed nonbattered women on their SIA response at 1 month postindex assault. RESULTS For the battered women sample, the SIA response at 1 month postindex assault was found to significantly predict an increase i...

The social files and medical records of 98 acutely battered wives who attended a surgical emergency department were studied. Although all women had been hospitalized during the decade preceding the present incident, wife battering was documented in the records in only 18%. The majority of the women (73%) were also known to the social services, but battering was documented in less than half of t...