Program for Alleviating and Reducing Trauma and Stress for Intimate Partner Violence

Our program is adapted from the original PARTS (Program For Alleviating and Reducing Trauma and Stress). And will include unique and specific elements for People who Use Violence (PUV) in intimate relationships. PARTS-IPV is structured in three phases. Phase I is 4-weeks of 120 minutes of weekly group-based sessions. This phase introduces the model and creates a "brave container" to address any ambivalence towards the program. Phase II lasts 8-weeks, maintaining the 120 minutes of weekly group-based sessions. This second phase focuses on "unblending" through working with Parts and connecting with Self. The final phase, Phase III runs 8 weeks and consists of weekly 120-minute group sessions focused "unburdening". Throughout the intervention, individual sessions will be help with an IFS-trained clinician at a frequency of around once a month for a total of 6 individual sessions. These sessions will focus on enhancing group participation, providing space for trauma counseling and unburdening, addressing negative beliefs or concerns that may arise about group, and providing insights into person reasons for the use of violence in intimate relationships. Participants may have up to 3 additional sessions to make up any missed group sessions.

This project is an important and timely pilot study. Previous reviews of interventions suggest there is a gap in effective interventions to treat IPV for those with trauma backgrounds (Cheng et al., 2021; Travers et al. 2021). PARTS1, PARTS2 and PARTS SUD have all demonstrated effective reductions in PTSD symptoms and enhanced emotion regulation and self-related processing (Comeau et al. 2024; Ally et al., submitted; Schuman-Olivier et al., in progress). The protocol's methodology follows previous intimate partner violence studies, incorporating verbal consent and partner inclusion, while employing rigorously implemented informed consent procedures and gold-standard measures to enhance the likelihood of success and publication. By incorporating the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation (DERS) and a WHO-5 for quality of life, we aim to address gaps in understanding the comprehensive factors contributing to intimate partner violence.

Primary Aim

The primary aim of this protocol is feasibility of a live-online version of the PARTS program. Feasibility is defined in two ways: intervention-based feasibility: 70% of participants completing at least 67% (e.g., 8/12) of the first 12 groups, study-protocol feasibility as 67% or more of participants completing week-20 study assessments (H1.1).

Secondary Aims The secondary aims are to examine the overall acceptability of the intervention as measured by the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8) (Larsen et al., 1979) with a mean score of at least 20 out of a total of 32 (H2.1), and intervention satisfaction as measured by a satisfaction question (would you recommend a friend) obtaining at least a mean of 7 out of 10 (H2.2).

A third secondary aim of the study is to investigate the potential effects of the intervention on the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) (Straus et al., 1996; Chapman & Gillespie, 2019). We hypothesize a risk reduction in physical and psychological violence, with an a priori expectation of obtaining a small to moderate effect size (Cohen's d: 0.2-0.5) from self-reports (H2.3). This effect size aligns with a comparably powered study, Strength at Home, among court-mandated civilians (N=23), which reported moderate effect sizes on CTS2.