Stopping the Violence: A Group Model to Change Men's Abusive Attitudes and Behaviors (Earthquake Engineering Monograph; 12)

Help men learn to change abusive behavior!

Stopping the Violence: A Group Model to Change Men’s Abusive Attitudes and Behaviors helps practitioners reduce the negative atmosphere in a batterers’ group for men while adapting to clients’ individual needs, abilities, and levels of motivation. Useful in any type of patient setting, this comprehensive, hands-on guide provides a complete, step-by-step model for a batterer program that includes all of the forms, handouts, tools, and assignments necessary for the treatment process. Pro-feminist, cognitive, and behavioral in its orientation, this program works to eliminate the mindset that dominates, controls, and leads to the battering of women.

The focus throughout the treatment process described in Stopping the Violence is not only on ending physical violence, but addressing what causes it. The exercises and suggestions in this program will teach your clients how emotional abuse, verbal abuse, substance abuse problems, mental health issues, and entitled and controlling attitudes contribute to and lead to battering. You will also find methods to help clients learn to take responsibility for their actions and discover if their childhoods have had an impact on their assumption of patriarchal and controlling attitudes. In addition, Stopping the Violence offers exercises on building self-confidence, self-esteem, self-control, and emotional support for your clients.

This guide offers other valuable suggestions and exercises, such as:

• an explanation of 12 educational units to be presented by the therapist, including such topics as abuse and its effects, anger regulation, stress management, shame and empowerment, assertiveness, communication, and conflict resolution
• showing the client how to and why he should develop an increased realization of the impact of his abuse
• assisting the client in learning to monitor his internal and external escalation-to-violence cues
• creating a supportive group atmosphere that will decrease men’s shame and isolation and increase their ability to feel empathy for themselves and others
• providing a reading list with additional resources that clients can use to enhance their treatment

Vital to any batterers’ treatment that is starting or already exists, Stopping the Violence will help you teach your clients how they can find pride as nonabusive men in a society full of patriarchal values, as well as teach them to be in control of themselvesnot their partners or their children. This guide will help you identify and change your clients’ abusive behaviors and successfully show them how abusive behavior is hurtful and destructive for everyone involved.

David J Decker