Addiction medicine and domestic violence

Domestic Violence is a major medical and legal problem, resulting in a grea t many deaths and injuries each year. Alcohol and other drug dependencies a re frequently found in both the perpetrators and victims of violence. This fact gives addiction medicine practitioners a unique opportunity to interve ne in both life-threatening disorders. This article gives diagnostic and in tervention guidelines for dealing with the issue of domestic violence in th e addiction medicine patient population. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.