Research paper: Antisocial Personality Disorder and Physical Partner Violence among Single and Dual Substance-Abusing Couples

Summary

 Theoretical explanation/hypothesis

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether single versus couples diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (APD) and drug use contributes to violence toward the partner. Drunkard men and women act aggressively and cause violence to each other. When the drug penetrates in the body, the users’ secondary cognitive abilities are affected and it becomes difficult to focus and consider social norms and other important things in social setting (Kelley & Braitman, 2016). In addition, people engage in physical partner violence due to antisocial personality behavior which limits the self-control. Lack of self-control increases aggression and are individuals are unable to control violent behaviors. Other important point is that men with APD are associated with physical partner violence than women (Kelley & Braitman, 2016).  In addition, when both partners have the same level of substance use, they portray a satisfying relation and less physical partner violence.

Main hypothesis:  in the study, it was hypothesized that APD in male contributes to higher physical partner violence than APD in women.

Methodology

  Sixty nine men and sixty nine women (heterosexual couples) with one child of 18years and below were the participants. The couples were drug users and were seeking treatment and the average years for men and women were 40.08 and 37.70 respectively. Structured Clinical Interview was done to each partner privately by clinical psychologist who had a 15years experience. To measures the partner physical violence, a physical assault subscale was used (Kelley & Braitman, 2016). Participants were asked to respond on various items including minor and severe assaults and the responses were used to create physical violence score. Structured Clinical Interview was also used in measuring antisocial behavior where two variables (male and female diagnosis with (APD) was used. Demographic was also measured by collecting data on gender, length of relationships, education and more from participants. Before analyzing the data, normality and outliers were examined using boxpots and Mplus (Kelley & Braitman, 2016).

 Main findings

  It was found that male partners who were diagnosed with APD had a higher level of physical violence perpetration. Even though women with APD showed perpetration of violence, male partner with APD presented higher physical violence. Other finding from the study is that men with antisocial personality behavior are strongly associated physical violence behaviors (Kelley & Braitman, 2016). Thus, APD contributed to male-female physical violence and this is an indication that women are victims of partner violence. Even though there was female-to-male violence, it was due to APD in men which resulted to less relationship satisfaction. Men with APD were manipulative and dishonest, and this creates psychological aggression in women and as a result it developed female-to-male violence (Kelley & Braitman, 2016). Other point is that in the study, it was found that men were diagnosed with APD than women and this contributes to lack of marriage satisfaction.  This helps the reader understand that the root cause of female-to-male violence is   relationship dissatisfaction which is contributed by APD in men (Kelley & Braitman, 2016).

 Strength and weaknesses of the study

            This study is associated with some strength in that when measuring violence perpetration, the study    combines APD with substance abuse. This helps the reader to understand that even men who diagnosed with APD did not act aggressively if both partners were drug users. This means that positive relationships outcomes were associated with couples who drunk together since the act was viewed as a recreational activity (Kelley & Braitman, 2016). Other strength in that DSM-IV-TR Axis I was reliable in assessing whether both partner were drug users. This system is effective in measuring psychological disorders. However, the study had some weaknesses in that only 69partners were used in the cross-sections study. This was a larger study which needed a large sample. In addition, this was a large study which needed couple-based counseling but this did not happen (Kelley & Braitman, 2016).  Last, in order to meet the hypothesis, a fine-grained analysis could be taken from different forms of alcohol but this did not happen since the sample size was small.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

 

Kelley, M., & Braitman, A. (2016). Antisocial Personality Disorder and Physical Partner Violence Among

Single and Dual Substance-Abusing Couples. Journal Of Family Violence, 31(4), 423-431.

doi:10.1007/s10896-016-9802-6