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Biomedical subjects

S B Berns

Publications and source records attributed to S B Berns.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Methods for defining and determining the clinical significance of treatment effects: description, application, and alternatives.

This article summarizes and scrutinizes the growth of the development of clinically relevant and psychometrically sound approaches for determining the clinical significance of treatment effects in mental health research by tracing its evolution, by examining modifications in the method, and by discussing representative applications. Future directions for this methodology are proposed.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗

Demand-withdraw interaction in couples with a violent husband.

This study examined the relationship between demand-withdraw interaction and battering in couples with a violent husband. The authors compared the interaction patterns of 47 couples with a violent husband with the interaction patterns of 28 distressed but nonviolent couples and 16 happily married nonviolent couples. All couples engaged in videotaped discussions of problem areas in their marriage. Both batterers and battered women showed less positive communication and more negative communication than did their nonviolent counterparts. Additionally, batterers showed significantly higher levels of both demanding and withdrawing than did other men. Battered women demanded more change than did women in nonviolent marriages but were significantly less inclined to withdraw than were their husbands. The discussion of these findings focuses on the interactional dynamics between batterers and battered women and how these interactions might be understood.

Adult↗

Demand/withdraw interaction patterns between different types of batterers and their spouses.

The investigation of subtypes of violent men could provide invaluable information to researchers and clinicians. In earlier studies, investigators examined whether subtypes of male batterers could be identified based on physiological markers in combination with observational and self-report perspectives. In a sample of batterers and their wives, they found a physiological marker that discriminated between two groups of violent men on several interesting dimensions. To highlight the importance of studying batterer typologies, the present study examined differences in marital interaction patterns across the two groups of batterers. Analyses revealed clinically relevant patterns of interaction in the two groups, and effect sizes indicating the possibility of differences between the two types of batterers. Implications for future research as well as therapy are discussed.

Adult↗