This chapter defines emerging disabilities; explores medical, psychosocial, and vocational implications of emerging disabilities that distinguish them from traditional disabilities; and provides demographic characteristics of individuals who are most vulnerable to acquiring emerging disabilities. It examines some social and environmental trends that have contributed to the development of emerging patterns and types of disabilities including advances in medicine and assistive technology, globalization, climate change, poverty, violence and trauma, the aging American populace, and disability legislation. Psychological and physical trauma from warfare, violent crime, intimate partner violence, and youth violence can result in permanent physical, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities. Diagnostic uncertainties, misdiagnoses, and skepticism on the part of medical providers are frequently associated with emerging disabilities. Women also represent a population that is at an increased risk of acquiring emerging disabilities and chronic illnesses. Rehabilitation systems are still not fully prepared to address the multifaceted needs of individuals with emerging disabilities.

This chapter discusses various types of violence and their impact on human health, functioning, and onset of physical and psychiatric disabilities, and identifies approaches and programs for treating individuals who have sustained disabilities from violent acts. It examines populations that are most vulnerable to violence, and explores trauma-informed approaches to providing services to these clients in all phases of the rehabilitation counseling process. Military sexual trauma (MST) is heavily confounded by military culture, making the decision to report sexual trauma extremely difficult. The functional limitations associated with disabilities acquired through violence can substantially impair survivor’s ability to achieve and maintain competitive employment. Outreach may be particularly necessary to inform individuals with violence-related disabilities about rehabilitation services. Frain et al. emphasized the importance of training in self-management techniques for veterans because they tend to have poor self-management skills.

This chapter discusses issues of power, the cycle of violence, learned helplessness (LH), the battered woman syndrome (BWS), and reasons victims stay in abusive relationships. Violence within intimate relationships can be understood as one partner gaining power over the other partner with the use of coercive and controlling tactics. Such tactics may be reinforced with physical and/or sexual violence. Battered women who acquire LH tend to be at high risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD); their development of LH is associated not only with their abusive situation but also with past difficult life circumstances. The dynamics of domestic violence are so complex that it is difficult for most people to understand why a woman living in an abusive relationship does not simply leave. Many of the common explanations for why victims stay are myths.

This chapter focuses on the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) on victims of diverse cultural backgrounds and/or at-risk populations who suffer social and economic injustices. It presents the barriers experienced by victims who are members of diverse populations, including those who are impoverished, older, living in rural areas, same-gender couples, living with disabilities, immigrants, Asian American, African American, Hispanic, Native American, and veterans returning from war. States that adopt the Family Violence Option (FVO) can establish programs, exemptions, and waivers to assist battered women. Persons who recruit women into the sex industry are known to social workers and law enforcement as controllers, traffickers, and pimps. Without performing proper screening to identify victims of sex trafficking, law enforcement may arrest victims under other prostitution statutes and subject them to further trauma. When members of at-risk and diverse populations are also victims of domestic violence, they live in multiple jeopardy.

This chapter reviews the characteristics and typologies of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators as well as methods to determine their level of lethality and motivation to change. Many perpetrators are treated in batterer intervention programs (BIP) which attempt to change their cognitive and behavioral patterns, thus discontinuing their abusive acts. Many perpetrators have a history of child abuse. They may have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, have witnessed IPV, or have been maltreated in some other manner. Substance abuse may also co-occur with IPV. Some researchers suggest that substance abuse is involved in anywhere from 20 to 80 of domestic violence cases. Although most traditional research and the literature addressing IPV between heterosexual couples focuses on female victims and male perpetrators, increasingly men are being recognized as the victims of female perpetrators.

In 1976, to protect victims from partner violence, some US courts began issuing orders of protection by 1989, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had legislation authorizing these orders. The 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) enabled federal courts to prosecute intimate partner violence (IPV) crimes across interstate lines, including violations of civil protection orders, as well as to impose enhanced sentences on defendants convicted of federal crimes. This chapter addresses orders of protection, the process for obtaining them, the debate as to their effectiveness, mandatory arrest, no-drop policies, and social workers’ responsibilities within the criminal justice system. Social workers can run batterer intervention programs (BIP) which assist perpetrators in changing their attitudes and behaviors toward intimate partners. If perpetrators successfully complete the programs, they can avoid further retribution including jail, removal of firearms, and fines.

This chapter focuses primarily on filicides in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). Historically, in these cases, children have often been seen to be corollary victims and often the potential risks to them have been ignored or minimized. IPV risk assessment is focused on the potential risk of harm to adult victims rather than the children. The chapter focuses on the risk of serious harm that children face when they live with IPV. Drawing from emerging research, it reviews findings about risk factors with a specific focus on IPV, and explores the effectiveness of current tools and assessment strategies in preventing child homicides related to IPV. Child homicides that occur in the chapter appear to differ from ones that are specifically child maltreatment related in terms of perpetrators’ motives.

This chapter discusses how the criminal justice system treats battered women over the past 40 years. In the United States, advocates who began working with battered women in the 1980s believed that the most important step to end threats of violence was to punish the batterer and hold him accountable for his misconduct. To do this the legal system had to be encouraged to take action whenever domestic violence was raised. A study of the needs for victims of intimate partner violence commissioned for the Colorado legislature found that over two thirds of the women in prison stated that they had been abuse victims. Other areas of the civil rights laws have also been used to better protect battered women. The gender bias, including sexism and racism, for women coming before the criminal justice system continues to make it difficult for women to seek safety and protection.

Attachment theory provides a rich conceptual framework for understanding issues that arise in intimate partner violence (IPV) that have not been well studied in adults. Attachment was initially conceived as a neurobiological-based need for the purpose of safety and survival. Moreover, through the attachment process individuals develop an internalized set of beliefs about the self and others, known as “internal working models”. In adult relationships, attachment processes are activated by way of a cognitive-affective-behavioral triad. Woman who engage in the commercial sex industry have a much higher risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. An interesting phenomenon that ties use of pornography on the Internet together with the sexual abuse of women and children has been found in the legal community. It is known that early sexualization of children may cause interpersonal difficulties that may make it more difficult to recognize the cycle of violence engaged in by the batterer.