According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience extreme physical violence from an intimate partner, at some point in their lives. This sort of domestic abuse between partners makes up 15% of violent crime in the United States. What’s even more terrifying about these events is that 1 in 5 of them involve a weapon. The sad reality of the picture of domestic abuse in the United States is that alcohol, especially heavy drinking, is involved in many of these situations…
Statistics of drinking and domestic violence
Studies on the effects of alcohol on domestic violence put different figures on the rate of physical domestic abuse incidents that involve drinking. One major study in 2001 concluded that the number was around half, while there have been other estimates that put the number as high as 90%.
Interestingly, one 2011 study by the National Library of Medicine found that female drinking habits in a heterosexual partnership had no correlation on male to female abuse, female to male abuse, or on bidirectional abuse. On the other hand, there was a strong correlation between a male partner’s drinking habits and male to female abuse (13% increase in risk) and bidirectional abuse (12% increase in risk).
Impulsivity of alcohol
The driving factor behind the devious relationship between alcohol and domestic violence is the increases in impulsive behavior that alcohol causes. Due to alcohol’s ability to tear down inhibition, people who are more inclined towards abusive behavior have less holding them back from those violent inclinations.
This is not a cause-and-effect relationship with alcoholism
It’s important to note that this research doesn’t indicate that there is causation between alcoholism and domestic violence. People who are prone to engage in abusive behavior are only more inclined to do so when under influence of alcohol, but there is no data that shows that alcoholism or alcohol abuse causes people to engage in violent behavior towards their partners.