Season 3 Episode 12: Weaponize & Fabricate: How Domestic Violence Perpetrators’ Behaviors Intersect with Survivors’ Mental Health and Substance Misuse Issues

About This Episode

Toxic Trio. Triple Play. Trifecta.

All over the globe, professionals working with families have shorthand jargon that reflects the prevalence of the complex mixture of issues that many families experience. Unfortunately, these phrases do not usually enhance the ability to partner with survivors or intervene with perpetrators. 

In this episode, David and Ruth take a deep dive into how the Safe & Together Model’s intersections framework offers a more powerful and accurate way to discuss the relationship between mental health, substance misuse, and domestic violence. Point by point they explore how perpetrators' behaviors intersect with adult and child survivors’ mental health and substance misuse. They examine how perpetrators cause, exacerbate, interfere with, fabricate, and weaponize these issues. They highlight the importance of contextualizing the survivors’ issues back to the perpetrators’ pattern and envisioning how perpetrators might be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.