Adjunctive Motivational Alcohol Intervention to Prevent IPV

Conditions

• Alcohol Use and Intimate Partner Violence

Eligibility Criteria

Sex

ALL

Age

18 Years - N/A

Healthy Volunteers

Not accepted

Interventions

• Motivational Enhancement Therapy — BEHAVIORAL
  In Session 1, the therapist provides personalized feedback on a range of assessment variables, including alcohol consumption levels, negative consequences from alcohol use, and family risk of alcoholism. Sessions 2-4 are follow-through sessions in which the therapist attempts to help the Veteran participant establish or reaffirm a commitment to an action plan for addressing alcohol concerns.
• Alcohol Education Control — BEHAVIORAL
  Will consist of 4 weekly individual sessions, approximately 60 minutes each. AE therapists will explain that their job is to provide the Veteran participants with information and education about the effects of alcohol, and that it is up to the Veteran participant to use this information as he sees fit. In each session, the Veteran participant will watch an educational videotape in a comfortable consulting room and will be given an opportunity to discuss the videotape with the project therapist for approximately 10 minutes. Written educational materials will supplement the information provided in the videos, and the therapist will ask several structured questions to determine whether the Veteran participant understood the material presented in the video.
• Treatment as Usual — BEHAVIORAL
  Supportive telephone monitoring sessions that ensure equal spacing between assessments across conditions and equal number of therapist contacts.
• Strength at Home — BEHAVIORAL
  IPV intervention which consists of 12 weekly, 2-hour cognitive-behavioral sessions offered in a closed group format and co-led by doctoral level male and female therapists. Strength at Home is based on a social information processing model of trauma and IPV and provides material covering psychoeducation regarding trauma and IPV, conflict and anger management skills, assertiveness training, and skills in stress management and communication.

Study Details

This is a study to provide much-needed experimental data on the efficacy of a brief alcohol Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) pre-group intervention for Veterans receiving group treatment for IPV perpetration. The investigators will compare those assigned to receive this 2-session MET intervention to those receiving a 2-session Alcohol Education (AE) intervention or a 2-session standard treatment as usual (TAU) telephone monitoring intervention. The investigators will examine whether MET leads to greater reductions in alcohol use problems and IPV perpetration, and increased help-seeking behavior for alcohol use problems. Participants will be 300 Veterans drawn from the Strength at Home IPV intervention program across the entire Veterans Health Administration system.

Key Dates

Start date

Sep 1, 2023

Status verified

Nov 2025

Primary completion

Sep 30, 2028

Completion

Sep 30, 2028

Study Design

Enrollment

300 participants (estimated)

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Arms

• Experimental: Motivational Enhancement Therapy
  Motivational enhancement therapy for alcohol use problems, which includes empathic support, feedback and advice, strategies for enhancing self-efficacy, techniques for eliciting self-motivational statements from the participant, strategies for addressing participant ambivalence about change and participant resistance to change, and methods for eliciting and affirming commitment to a specific change plan (active intervention).
• Experimental: Alcohol Education Control
  Psychoeducational intervention intended to: (1) dispel myths about the effects of alcohol, (2) provide information about the general risks of drinking and process of recovery from alcohol problems, (3) provide information about the specific risks related to family relationships and IPV, (4) offer self-help program information and related strategies to address drinking problems, (5) promote and encourage healthy decision-making, and (6) reinforce the benefits of abstinence or controlled drinking.
• Other: Telephone Monitoring
  Brief supportive telephone monitoring sessions that are commonly delivered while Veterans wait to begin their groups (treatment as usual).

Primary Outcome Measure

Quantity/Frequency of Alcohol Consumption, Self-Report (QFV) [ Time Frame: Baseline, post-treatment, three-month, six-month, nine-month, and twelve-month follow-ups ]

Central Contacts

• Casey T Taft, PhD
  (857) 364-4344
  [email protected]
• Samuel F Frank, BA
  (617) 821-2591
  [email protected]

Locations (3)

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