This paper presents data suggesting that the relationship between alcohol and violence on campus may be direct.
The belief that alcoholism causes violence on campuss is a notion widely held both in and outside of the substance abuse field, despite a lack of information to support it. Although research indicates that among men who drink heavily, there is a higher rate of perpetrating assaults resulting in serious physical injury than exists among other men, the majority of men are not high-level drinkers and the majority of men classified as high-level drinkers do not abuse their partners.
Since the 1970's, significant efforts have been made to increase the public's understanding of violence on campuss and to educate professionals and service providers about this problem. Through accounts from battered and formerly schoolboys, alcohol violence is now understood to include a range of behaviors - physical, sexual, economic, emotional and psychological abuse. There is also an increased awareness that the societal tendency to blame violence victims and excuse perpetrators is rooted in a history of cultural and legal traditions that have supported the domination and abuse by drunk people in intimate relationships. .
Despite the significant correlation between violence and chemical dependency, hardly any research has been conducted and little has been written about the need to develop intervention strategies that address both the violence and the substance abuse problems of chemically dependent persons who batter. Neither system currently is equipped to provide the range of services needed by battered people and batterers who are affected by chemical dependency. .
In the addictions treatment system, misinformation often leads counselors to understand and respond to violence through the use of an addictions framework, an approach that has particularly harmful consequences for battered people.