The use of the term gender violence is as recent as the recognition of the reality of mistreatment of women. Gender violence is the violence that men exert on women due to their specific gender role.
When gender violence occurs in the partner, the attention, evaluation and intervention of the woman victim of abuse is necessary and a priority.
However, the psychological intervention of the abusers is also necessary. Treating an abuser against the partner does not imply that they are not responsible for their actions.
The men who carry out this violence are responsible for their behavior. They have significant psychological limitations in their belief system, impulse control, jealousy control, communication skills and problem solving that must be addressed.
The intervention programs with abusers in Spain have been carried out recently since the last decade. They can be divided into programs developed within prison and programs developed outside of prison.
Between 2001 and 2002, the first intervention was carried out in 8 prisons with men convicted of crimes of gender violence.
The intervention was carried out in a group manner, with a weekly session and a duration of approximately 6 months..
As a result of the results obtained and the experiences of the Psychologists from Penitentiary Institutions A new intervention project with abusers emerged in 2004, the "Program of treatment in prison for aggressors in the family environment".
This program was developed in a first phase in 18 Penitentiary Centers with 162 inmates convicted of crimes of intimate partner violence.
Like the previous one, it was carried out in a group way but doubling its duration. It is characterized by having a cognitive-behavioral approach which reinforces the emotional aspects of the intervention and adapts the contents to the situation of deprivation of liberty, such as:
One of the intervention programs in the community context is the one developed by Echeburúa and his team (Redondo, 2008).
This program focused on family violence it began to be applied in 1997 as the authors detected the need to treat men who exert domestic violence in addition to the essential intervention with the victims.
In Spain, within the framework of alternative measures to the prison sentence, various intervention programs have been developed within the community framework, some of the most relevant are:
The program takes place in the Forensic Psychology Unit of the University of Santiago de Compostela and seeks the psychosocial reeducation of gender abusers and the eradication of maladaptive behavioral patterns through learning and generalization of skills.
It focuses on aspects such as accepting responsibility for violent behaviors, modifying irrational beliefs about gender and the use of violence, promoting respect for women, internalizing adaptive behaviors, and maintaining and generalizing such skills..
In collaboration with the Navarro Institute of Legal Psychology, It has two aspects, one for men in freedom and the other for those who are in prison.
Its general objective is to change the beliefs and attitudes that favor the use of violence through self-observation techniques, reinforcement of non-violent responses, recording of emotions, training in problem solving, social skills, anticipation of risk situations and cognitive restructuring. to modify sexist thinking and the justification of violence.
Depending on the level of severity, the program format can be adapted (full for more serious cases, medium for men more motivated to change and the short program for less serious cases).
It is carried out in collaboration with the University of Valencia from the perspective of the ecological model of Bronfenbrenner (1979).
Focuses the intervention with abusers at the levels of intrapersonal, interpersonal, situational and macrosocial analysis.
The content of the program focuses after a contact, on the basic principles against intimate partner violence, on strategies for change at each of the levels (personal, family, situational, socio-cultural) and on the prevention of relapses.
With the University of Granada and from a gender orientation the objective is to focus the intervention on the specific behaviors used by violent men to maintain power and control within the couple relationship.
Its content focuses on aspects such as minimization, denial and blaming, male privileges, threats and coercion, intimidation, emotional, sexual and economic abuse, social isolation and manipulation of children..
Made by Group 5 Social Action and Management (Madrid) from the perspective of the transtheoretical model of change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1982 and 1986). The program adjusts the interventions to the different stages of the change process: contemplative, action and maintenance.
Focuses on the stage contemplative in aspects such as the creation of group dynamics, assumption of responsibility, motivation for treatment and in the development of tools for the cessation of violence.
In the stage of action It deals with the cessation of all types of violence, promotion of thoughts that tend towards equality in relationships, improvement of social skills and the management of emotions and stress.
Finally the stage of maintenance focuses on reworking and consolidating changes and preventing possible relapse.
Its objective is the replacement of violent behaviors by behaviors adapted in couple relationships from a cognitive behavioral perspective.
In which the concept of gender violence is discussed, the emotions involved, the beliefs that sustain the abuse, skills in interpersonal relationships, alcohol consumption and the construction of an alternative life.
It is a program of cognitive behavioral perspective which introduces aspects related to the gender perspective.
It differs from the previous programs in three aspects: the analysis of the different behaviors that make up gender violence, especially gender violence psychological violence and the instrumentalization of children, emphasizes the need to work on the initial motivation of the aggressors and integrates clinical aspects with a gender perspective.
It begins with an individual evaluation that will allow the therapist to decide whether the application of the program individually or in a group is more appropriate..
After the initial evaluation, the program consists of three phases: motivation and evaluation, intervention and monitoring.
The first phase focuses on working individually to increase motivation to change and eliminate resistance.
In the second Aspects such as emotional intelligence, self-control and anger management skills, empathy, sexist beliefs that support violence, jealousy, the construction of healthy relationships, the consequences of violence in minors, etc. are covered..
In its last phase, the changes made are evaluated and the intervention is closed emphasizing the most important prosocial objectives in each case.
All these external programs are characterized by serving men who have mostly gone through criminal proceedings and that they accept the suspension of the execution of the custodial sentence on condition of participating in specific training programs on gender violence.
In general, these programs encounter numerous difficulties for their correct execution due to the absence of voluntariness of the users that integrate them.
However, psychological intervention with abusers is necessary since it allows giving the opportunity for them to change their behavior while facing their responsibilities, it helps in the protection of the victims since unfortunately many of the victims continue to live with the aggressor and for interrupting the chain of intergenerational transmission and observational learning by the children.
It is also about preventing violence with future victims, since if an abuser is not treated repeat the same violent behaviors with future partners.
The clinical intervention it is even more necessary the higher the risk of serious violence against the partner, therefore in the first contact with the aggressor it is always necessary to assess their level of motivation to change and its current degree of danger since the protection of the victim is a priority.
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