Efficacy of an integrated treatment for fathers with Co-occurring substance misuse and family violence.

Substance Use (SU) and Family Violence (FV) are both critical public health concerns and often occur together. However, most existing interventions target only one of these problems, without consideration of the other, and fail to address when individuals with these issues are parents. The current Stage II randomized clinical trial (RCT) aims to compare two individually delivered interventions, Fathers for Change (F4C) and Individual Drug Counseling (IDC) in 280 fathers who have used physical or psychological violence towards a partner, have a substance use disorder, and have a biological child between the ages of 3 months and 12 years. They will be recruited from two locations (Department of Veteran Affairs [VA] and community substance use treatment clinic). This efficacy study aims to demonstrate that F4C can achieve comparable SU reductions to IDC, while also reducing FV, with increases in emotion regulation meditating the relationship between the intervention group and reduced SU and FV. Findings from this study have large scale clinical and public health implications that can help target and address co-occurring SU and FV and mitigate negative outcomes for affected children and families.