The impact of community-based outreach on psychological distress and victim safety in women exposed to intimate partner abuse.

Objective: Using a longitudinal, randomized controlled trial, this study assessed the impact of a community-based outreach versus a more traditional criminal justice system-based referral program on women's distress and safety following police-reported intimate partner abuse (IPA).

Method: Women (N = 236 women) with police-reported IPA were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 interdisciplinary community-coordinated response program conditions: Outreach (community-based victim advocate outreach) or Referral (criminal justice system-based victim advocate referrals to community-based agencies). Participants were interviewed 3 times over a 1-year period: within 26 (median) days of police-reported IPA, 6 months later, and 12 months later. Primary outcome measures included posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptom severity (Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale; Beck Depression Inventory-II), fear appraisals (Trauma Appraisal Questionnaire), IPA revictimization (Revised Conflict Tactics Scale), and readiness to leave the relationship with the abuser.

Results: One year after the initial interview, women in the Outreach condition reported decreased PTSD and depression symptom severity and fear compared with women in the Referral condition. Although both conditions were unrelated to revictimization in the follow-up year, women in the Outreach condition reported greater readiness to leave the abuser and rated services as more helpful than women in the Referral condition.

Conclusions: This is one of the first studies to examine community-based outreach in the context of an interdisciplinary community coordinated response to police-reported IPA. The findings suggest that community-based outreach by victim advocates results in decreased distress levels, greater readiness to leave abusive relationships, and greater perceived helpfulness of services relative to system-based referrals.