Draft:Substance use coercion

• Comment: Statements like "Prevalence data on domestic violence, including substance use coercion, can be challenging to gather" are not encyclopedic, and need to be ascribed to whoever made the claim. Many of the references are from the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health and I am not convinced they automatically pass WP:MEDRS. In addition, the draft needs a lot of cleanup, starting with proper citations--these are just bare URLs. Drmies (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

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Substance use coercion is a form of abuse characterized by coercive tactics that focus on a partner's use of substances. Substance use coercion (SUC) is often a part of a broader pattern of abuse and control. SUC is a form of domestic violence and can occur alongside physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, financial, sexual, and other forms of abuse. SUC can be particularly insidious as it leverages societal stigma and criminalization of substance use to keep abused partners from accessing support and services to assist with substance use and mental health challenges that are often co-occuring among people experiencing domestic violence. Additionally, survivors of domestic violence who experience substance use coercion are more likely to experience challenges with major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder and addiction.

"In the context of IPV, coercion refers to the use of force or manipulation to control a partner’s thoughts, actions, and behaviors through violence, intimidation, threats, degradation, isolation, and/or surveillance. The term substance use coercion refers to coercive tactics targeted toward a partner’s use of substances as part of a broader pattern of abuse and control"

Intersection of Domestic Violence and Substance Use

Being abused by an intimate partner increases one's likelihood of substance use; likewise, people who use substances are significantly more likely to be abused by a partner. This creates a two-way risk factor for survivors of domestic violence.

Prevalence

Prevalence data on domestic violence, including substance use coercion, can be challenging to gather. Formal crime databases like the Uniform Crime Report do not accurately record domestic violence incidents nor the details of abuse that occurred. And more importantly, a large percentage of survivors of domestic violence do not contact law enforcement out of fear of being criminalized because of substance use or immigration status, fear of retaliation, not being believed, or being blamed for their own abuse. A widely used survey to gather data on domestic violence is the National Crime Victims Survey which is based on interviews with victims of crimes. However, this only includes descriptions of "physically violent" forms of abuse ad does not provide adequate prevalence data on substance use coercion.

Therefore, the majority of data on substance use coercion prevalence has been gathered through surveys of survivors of domestic violence. A large survey conducted with survivors of domestic violence who contacted the National Domestic Violence Hotline found that, among survivors who answered the survey:

27% answered yes when asked "Has your partner or ex-partner ever pressured or forced you to use alcohol or other drugs, or made you use more than you wanted?"

37.5% answered yes when asked "Has your partner or ex-partner ever threatened to report your alcohol or other drug use to anyone in authority to keep you from getting something you want or need (e.g., custody of children, a job, benefits, or a protective order)?"

Of those who tried to get help for use of alcohol or other drugs, 60.1% said their partner or ex-partner tried to prevent them from getting help.

Dynamics and Impact

Substance use coercion can take many forms.

An abusive partner may:

- Force, coerce, or pressure their partner to use substances. This may include forcing someone to use new substances, more of a substance, or using against their will.

- Sabotage a partner's recovery. This may include taking their medications for recovery, preventing them from attending doctor appointments, or keeping substances around to tempt them.

- Refuse to provide any assistance to aid them in recovery and healing. This can include not allowing them to access childcare, transportation, insurance, or financial resources

Additionally, abusive partners are able to leverage the stigma and criminalization of substance use to control a partner. For example, abusive partners may: try to limit a survivor's ability to call police for help; make threats to have children removed because of their substance use; or use stigma to isolate a survivor from supportive family, friends, and social networks.. This can severely limit a survivor's ability to access support and services for mental health and substance use, as well as assistance for meeting basic needs (i.e., housing, food, money, healthcare, childcare).

Substance use coercion has direct effects on survivors of domestic violence. These impacts can include:

Fear or reluctance to contact police for assistance

Minimzing or blaming themselves for abuse because substances were involved

Being barred from receiving services from high-barrier DV organizations, housing programs, and other services because they use substances

Fear of reaching out for help because they are afraid they will have their children removed because they use substances

Risk of overdose or death because of increased substance use, inability to connect with recovery services, or sabotaged recovery