Evaluation of a treatment program for dating violence

Abstract

The specialized literature does not report the design and evaluation of intervention alternatives for adolescents and young adults involved in acts of dating violence, a problem that reaches high prevalence rates. This study aimed to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a program for young unmarried couples who have experienced violence, using a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and intact groups (experimental and control), in which 12 heterosexual couples of young people participated, all of them between 17 and 26 years-old, linked through a call made by different media in their city of residence, six assigned to the experimental group and six to the control group. The program is developed in 10 sessions, in addition a follow-up, including psychoeducation about dating violence, beliefs and expectations about the rela-tionship, communication skills, empathy, anger management and management of jealousy. The results showed statistically significant decreases at post-treatment level in the experimental group compared with the control group, in attitudes in favor of intimate violence, submissive communication and frequency of abuse, as well as an increase in assertive communication, changes that were maintained a month after the intervention ended. These results support the effectiveness of the program.