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The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments

Empirical evidence supports that individuals with alexithymia might be prone to certain types of violence, such as intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). Moreover, considering that alexithymia is directly involved in behavior regulation, problems due to identifying and regulating emotional...

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Autores principales: Romero Martínez, Ángel, Lila, Marisol, Moya-Albiol, Luis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6801596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31581415
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193695
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author Romero Martínez, Ángel
Lila, Marisol
Moya-Albiol, Luis
author_facet Romero Martínez, Ángel
Lila, Marisol
Moya-Albiol, Luis
author_sort Romero Martínez, Ángel
collection PubMed
description Empirical evidence supports that individuals with alexithymia might be prone to certain types of violence, such as intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). Moreover, considering that alexithymia is directly involved in behavior regulation, problems due to identifying and regulating emotional states might be postulated as responsible, at least in part, for the success of psychotherapeutic treatments designed for decreasing the future risk of reoffending. Therefore, we assessed whether alexithymia was a good predictor of the discontinuation of treatment (dropout) and the risk of recidivism during the initial stages of intervention in a sample of men convicted of IPVAW perpetration (n = 118), while controlling for potential confounding variables (i.e., socio-demographic characteristics, impulsivity, and drug misuse). Our data demonstrate that high alexithymic traits lead to dropout and a high risk of recidivism during the initial stages of treatment, remaining significant even after including potential confounding variables. Even though impulsivity and drug misuse increase the amount of explained variance, none of them moderates the association of alexithymia with dropout and/or reoffending. It should be noted that this study identified alexithymia as a direct modulator of violence due to its effects on discontinuing IPVAW treatment during initial stages. Therefore, as we gain knowledge analyzing the relationships between previously mentioned factors, it could be applied to develop valid screening methods along with strengthening current rehabilitation programs and designing adjuvant treatments to increase their effectiveness.
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spelling pubmed-68015962019-10-31 The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments Romero Martínez, Ángel Lila, Marisol Moya-Albiol, Luis Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Empirical evidence supports that individuals with alexithymia might be prone to certain types of violence, such as intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). Moreover, considering that alexithymia is directly involved in behavior regulation, problems due to identifying and regulating emotional states might be postulated as responsible, at least in part, for the success of psychotherapeutic treatments designed for decreasing the future risk of reoffending. Therefore, we assessed whether alexithymia was a good predictor of the discontinuation of treatment (dropout) and the risk of recidivism during the initial stages of intervention in a sample of men convicted of IPVAW perpetration (n = 118), while controlling for potential confounding variables (i.e., socio-demographic characteristics, impulsivity, and drug misuse). Our data demonstrate that high alexithymic traits lead to dropout and a high risk of recidivism during the initial stages of treatment, remaining significant even after including potential confounding variables. Even though impulsivity and drug misuse increase the amount of explained variance, none of them moderates the association of alexithymia with dropout and/or reoffending. It should be noted that this study identified alexithymia as a direct modulator of violence due to its effects on discontinuing IPVAW treatment during initial stages. Therefore, as we gain knowledge analyzing the relationships between previously mentioned factors, it could be applied to develop valid screening methods along with strengthening current rehabilitation programs and designing adjuvant treatments to increase their effectiveness. MDPI 2019-10-01 2019-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6801596/ /pubmed/31581415 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193695 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Romero Martínez, Ángel
Lila, Marisol
Moya-Albiol, Luis
The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title_full The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title_fullStr The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title_full_unstemmed The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title_short The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
title_sort importance of considering alexithymia during initial stages of intimate partner violence interventions to design adjuvant treatments
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6801596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31581415
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193695
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