Research article
Adulthood Stressors, History of Childhood Adversity, and Risk of Perpetration of Intimate Partner Violence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2010.10.016Get rights and content

Background

More than half a million U.S. women and more than 100,000 men are treated for injuries from intimate partner violence (IPV) annually, making IPV perpetration a major public health problem. However, little is known about causes of perpetration across the life course.

Purpose

This paper examines the role of “stress sensitization,” whereby adult stressors increase risk for IPV perpetration most strongly in people with a history of childhood adversity.

Methods

The study investigated a possible interaction effect between adulthood stressors and childhood adversities in risk of IPV perpetration, specifically, whether the difference in risk of IPV perpetration associated with past-year stressors varied by history of exposure to childhood adversity. Analyses were conducted in 2010 using de-identified data from 34,653 U.S. adults from the 2004–2005 follow-up wave of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions.

Results

There was a significant stress sensitization effect. For men with high-level childhood adversity, past-year stressors were associated with an 8.8 percentage point (pp) increased risk of perpetrating compared to a 2.3 pp increased risk among men with low-level adversity. Women with high-level childhood adversity had a 14.3 pp increased risk compared with a 2.5 pp increased risk in the low-level adversity group.

Conclusions

Individuals with recent stressors and histories of childhood adversity are at particularly elevated risk of IPV perpetration; therefore, prevention efforts should target this population. Treatment programs for IPV perpetrators, which have not been effective in reducing risk of perpetrating, may benefit from further investigating the role of stress and stress reactivity in perpetration.

Section snippets

Data

The NESARC used a multistage sampling design that yielded a representative sample of the civilian, non-institutionalized population aged ≥18 years residing in the U.S. at Wave 1 in 2001–2002 (81% response).35, 36 The present 2010 study uses data primarily from the Wave-2 follow-up interview (n=34,653, response rate, 86.7%; cumulative response, 70.2%),36 conducted in 2004–2005, which assessed IPV perpetration, childhood adversities, and past-year stressors. For respondents present in Wave 2,

Results

Among respondents married or in a romantic relationship in the past year (76.2% of women and 85.6% of men), women endorsed past-year IPV perpetration more often than men, with 7.0% (SE=0.3) of women and 4.2% (SE=0.2) of men self-reporting perpetration (χ21=61.9, p<0.001). Serious IPV perpetration was also more common among women than men, with 2.2% (SE=0.1) of women and 1.2% (SE=0.1) of men endorsing serious perpetration (χ21=24.3, p<0.001). Men and women reported similar levels of perpetrating

Discussion

Our major finding is that there is an interaction between recent stressors and childhood adversity, such that individuals exposed both to recent stressors and childhood adversity are at greater risk of IPV perpetration than would be predicted by an additive effect of stressors and childhood adversity alone. Prior work has examined the effects of childhood adversity and recent adult stressors separately and found that both predict perpetration. However, the current results show that association

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