Intimate Partner Violence Study

Previous research findings concerning domestic violence due to alcohol consumption suggest that intimate partner violence (IPV) only manifests in a subpopulation of alcoholics. However, the emphasis of the psychological reasoning that predisposes a subpopulation of alcoholics to initiate this violence is unclear. The article, “Smaller right amygdala male patients with a history of intimate partner violence: a volumetric imaging study”, illustrates that based on the MRI studies, there is a high correlation between abnormalities of the orbital frontal cortex (oFC) volume and the severity of aggression in psychiatric patients. Also, repeat violent offenders with anti-social personality disorder show reduced gray matter volumes in different …show more content…
The purpose of the article is to compare the brain volumes of alcohol-dependent patients who evidence a particular type of impulsive aggression known as intimate partner violence with alcohol dependence (IPV-ADs) compared to the subjects who are alcoholics without IPV as well as the healthy controls (HCs). The researchers hypothesized that IPV-ADs would have a smallest prefrontal cortex and amygdala compared with the nonviolent alcoholics by measuring both the absolute volume and the ratios to the intracranial brain volume. Before participating in the research experiment, protocols were conducted at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. The researchers recruited the participants …show more content…
The research findings show that having a smaller right amygdala can affect the decision of the alcoholics to become abusive to their loved ones. Based on this study, they found that the amygdala contains other essential functions such as the rewarding effects of alcohol and in influencing social interactions that could, in fact, affect the rate of intimate partner violence. Limitations of the research were the relatively small sample size of the study, the fact that only Caucasian males were investigated and that only the number of years of education was considered. The results might have changed if a larger number of people were used and if females and blacks were also included. It would have also been more significant if they looked at the intelligent quotient, rather than the years of education of the group studied. Although the researchers discovered that the reduced right amygdala volume found in the abusive alcoholics does not enable a casual conclusion to be drawn between the amygdala size and impulsive aggression evidenced by IPV-AD, it does add to the growing research to signify that there are fundamental differences between alcoholics with and without intimate partner