Family violence has a profound impact on both youth and parents. It affects well-being, but also puts pressure on parenting and the parent-child relationship. Moreover, there is a shortage of effective forms of treatment. Many youth stop treatment prematurely, while in quite a few families the violence continues.
Especially for developing youth, rapid recovery is important. Fictorie therefore focused in her research at how we better can understand, improve and accelerate youth's recovery from family violence.
Safety at home sets recovery in motion
One striking finding is that trauma symptoms already begin to decline when less violence occurs at home. Thus, a safer home situation is an important foundation for recovery.
Intensive trauma treatment works faster
When trauma-focused treatments are offered intensively, trauma symptoms decrease faster. Even youth who report that the violence had not completely stopped reported improvement after their treatment.
Treatment persistence works better in a family-oriented form
In the Family-based Intensive Trauma Treatment (FITT), not a single young person stopped prematurely. This is an important outcome because dropout rates are normally high in this target group. Although it is still unclear whether family participation leads to better treatment outcomes, youth indicated in interviews that they perceived both the intensive nature and family involvement as positive.
Pay attention to safety, and to stress in parents
Treatment providers should pay continued attention to safety in families. In doing so, it is important to ask both parents and youth about violence at home, as their perspectives may differ. Stress in parents deserves extra attention: it can be a risk factor for the onset or continuation of violence.
Treatment can also start when there is still some violence
Recovery-focused treatment need not to be delayed until all violence has stopped. In cases of family violence without current coercive control, intensive family-based trauma treatment may actually be helpful.
Early recognition means earlier help
To support young people and families more quickly, better recognition of family violence and its consequences is necessary. This requires alertness among professionals and good cooperation between different care providers and agencies.
Fictorie defends her dissertation April 22 at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.