Season 2 Episode 10: Trauma-informed is not the same as domestic violence-informed: A conversation about the intersection of domestic violence perpetration, mental health & addiction

Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

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In this episode of Partnered with a Survivor, David & Ruth tackle one of the most pressing issues in the domestic violence field: how to make mental health and addiction services more domestic violence-informed when it comes to interacting with survivors. While awareness of trauma and its impact continues to increase, it often is decontextualized from the dynamics of coercive control. Mental health and addiction professionals are often ill-prepared by their education and training to integrate coercive control into their assessments. Organizations that are striving to trauma-informed are not always committing to be domestic violence-informed. Domestic violence survivors are often harmed by these gaps.
In this episode Ruth & David, discuss

• How perpetrators' can cause and exacerbate existing mental health or addiction issues for adult and child survivors
• How perpetrators' can interfere with other family members' treatment and use their involvement with treatment against them
• How systems, like family court and child welfare, may more negatively perceive a survivors' mental health and addiction issues than perpetrators' coercive control
• How practitioners and organizations may have blindspots regarding how current coercive control dynamics may be impacting survivors' mental health and addiction treatment

David & Ruth also tackle how structural sexism, racism and colonisation dynamics are often ignored in mainstream mental health and addiction paradigms to the detriment of clients from oppressed communities. Ruth also shares about how she's been impacted by reading Judy Atkinson's book, Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia
If you like this episode you may want to also listen to the following other episodes of Partnered with a Survivor:
Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators
Season 2, Episode 1: 6 Steps to Partnering with Survivors
Episode 30: 4 Ways the Concept of Trauma Bonding Works Against Survivors
Episode 18: Survivors aren’t Broken! An intimate discussion about support and partnership in relationships

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."