An Examination of the Perceived Social Support Levels of Women in Methadone Maintenance Treatment Programs Who Experience Various Forms of Intimate Partner Violence
Received 21 December 2006; accepted 15 October 2007.
Background
Intimate partner violence (IPV) has emerged as a serious problem among women in drug treatment programs. Research has underscored the importance of social support for abused women as well as women who use substances.
Objectives
The main objectives of this study were to describe the perceived social support levels and examine the associations between various forms of IPV and perceived levels of available social support perceived levels among a sample of women in drug treatment programs.
Methods
Face-to-face, structured interviews were conducted with randomly selected 416 women on methadone.
Results
The prevalence of physical, sexual, and injurious IPV in the sample was 39%, 31%, and 16% respectively, and the combined IPV prevalence was 44.5%. Findings from multiple linear regression models revealed that lower levels of perceived social support were significantly associated with physical aggression (β = −4.71; p = .0001), sexual assaults (β = −4.10; p = .003), and injurious attacks (β = −4.03; p = .022). Respondents perceived highest levels of social support from their “significant others” (mean = 5.64; standard deviation [SD] = 1.27) and lowest levels of social support from friends (mean = 4.20; SD = 1.48). The average network size was 2.7 individuals.
Implications
Findings from this study highlighted significantly lower levels of perceived social support levels for drug-using women in the context of IPV experiences. Interventions with these women should focus on strengthening social support networks that enable help seeking for both IPV and substance abuse issues.
aAdelphi University School of Social Work, Garden City, New York
bSocial Intervention Group, Columbia University School of Social Work, New York, New York
Correspondence to: Dr. Subadra Panchanadeswaran, Adelphi University School of Social Work, 1 South Avenue, Room 343, Garden City, New York 11530.
Supported by grants by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant R01DA11027) to N.E.-B.
1 Subadra Panchanadeswaran is an Assistant Professor at the Adelphi University School of Social Work. Her research interests include domestic violence, health effects of abuse and trauma on immigrant women, and HIV/AIDS. She is a trained social worker with international work and research experience with communities and abuse survivors.
2 Nabila El-Bassel is a Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the Director of the Social Intervention Group, which was established in 1990 as a multidisciplinary research center on HIV and drug abuse. She is also the Executive Director of the Columbia University Global Health Research Center of Central Asia. Over the past 18 years, Dr. El-Bassel has designed and tested HIV prevention strategies in clinical trials for women, men, and couples. She has also been funded to train junior faculty and research scientists on HIV prevention intervention science. Dr. El-Bassel has published more than 150 papers and has played a prominent role in national and international leadership to combat the HIV epidemic.
3 Louisa Gilbert is Co-Director of the Social Intervention Group (SIG) and Co-Director of the Columbia University Global Health Research Center in Central Asia. She has served as a Co-Investigator on six National Institutes of Health funded studies. She has co-authored more than 50 articles with El-Bassel and has presented papers at several international and national conferences on HIV/AIDS and substance abuse.
4 Elwin Wu is an Assistant Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW) and an Associate Director of the CUSSW Social Intervention Group, which focuses on the overlapping epidemics of drug abuse, intimate partner violence, and HIV/AIDS. Dr. Wu is conducting research examining the predictors of the different trajectories of pro-social change among participants attending alternative to incarceration programs. In addition, Dr. Wu is developing and testing a couples-based HIV/STI preventive intervention for drug-involved men of color in same-sex relationships.
5 Mingway Chang is a statistician at the Social Intervention Group. His research interests include mathematical methods for theory building, methodological issues of survey research and structural equation modeling. His current research focus is to analyze couple data with discrepancies between partners’ responses.
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