Researchers Link Drinking Habits to Intimate Partner Violence

A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health says that there is a link between drinking habits and getting into violent relationship.  

This research is a follow up of another study, which was based on IPV (intimate personal violence) by male and female partners under the influence of alcohol.

Christina Mair was the lead researcher of the study. The research claims that men who drink regularly at parties have a greater probability of being violent toward their partners. Whereas women were found to be more violent  to their partners when they boozed at home.

 "Perhaps men who drink frequently at parties are surrounded by others who share more permissive norms about (intimate partner violence), and they get riled up while at the party, then go home and hit their wife," Christina Mair stated in a report by Reuters.

More than 1,500 couples from California were individually interviewed about drinking habits in the past year and about occurrence of any psychological, physical or sexual activity, which caused any kind of damage to the relationship.  

The researchers noted  6 percent of male-to-female partner violence cases and 10 percent of cases, which were female-to-male violence.

It is a common belief that men and women tend to act in an aggressive and violent manner toward their partners when drunk.

"A great deal of research over the past few decades has established that alcohol use is a contributing cause of intimate partner violence," Dominic Parrott, a psychologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said.

This study could not prove the exact impact of alcohol linked with partner's aggression in a relationship. There was no proof of when and how many times the partners acted violently under the influence of alcohol.

"But the data do not indicate how much of the partner violence actually involved drinking," said Graham, who was not a part of the research team.

This research received various opposing remarks by other researchers and scientists due to the lack of accuracy.

"It is an interesting question whether certain drinking contexts have higher risk of IPV over and above how much alcohol is consumed in these contexts," Kathryn Graham, a senior scientist for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto told Reuters Health.

Millions of Americans fall prey to IPV every year; about 85 percent of the total IPV victims are women as per Bureau of Justice Statistics.