This is the Medscape Psychiatry Minute. I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees. Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a major global problem with significant medical and social implications for the women involved and their children. Home-visiting interventions in families that are at risk for abuse have been tried as an approach to reduce the incidence of IPV. But are they effective?
A team of investigators[1] from Radboud University in The Netherlands has performed a systematic review to assess the effectiveness of home visitations in reducing IPV experienced by mothers. Of the 1258 articles identified in a search of the PubMed, PsychINFO, and Embase databases from inception until March 2014, only 19 studies (with six different home-visiting studies) met the research inclusion criteria and were examined in detail. Three of these six studies showed significant reductions in IPV and three did not. The authors concluded that home-visiting interventions that explicitly support abused women to stop IPV seem to be effective in reducing IPV, but there is no evidence to show whether these results are effective in the long term. Given that IPV is so common, it is disappointing that so little research has occurred on the effectiveness of home visitation as an intervention. This is an area that seems to merit much more research attention. This article is selected from Medscape Best Evidence.I'm Dr Peter Yellowlees.
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Cite this: Peter M. Yellowlees. Home-Visit Interventions to Reduce Intimate Partner Violence - Medscape - Aug 03, 2015.
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