Season 3 Episode 2: Perpetrators' Weaponization of Mental Health and Addiction Against Survivors

Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

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Have you ever seen survivors’ mental health or substance use issues turned against them by a domestic violence perpetrator? Have you been concerned about a domestic violence survivor’s treatment being sabotaged by an abusive partner? In this podcast, David Mandel, Executive Director and Founder of the Safe & Together Institute and Ruth Stearns Mandel explore these questions. They also talk about how a perpetrator pattern-based approach can help protect survivors against these behaviors.
The show is broken down into three major themes:

• What is weaponization of mental health and addiction?
• Why is systems are vulnerable to these manipulations
• How we can fix (or perpetrator proof) our systems

David & Ruth talk about how perpetrator's fabricated allegations can gain currency through sheer repetition. David breaks down emotional abuse into different types of abuse depending on who the perpetrator's audience is. They also discuss how perpetrators benefit from:

• the tendency to pathologize/psychologize survivors
• a lack of focus on strengths
• how mental health and addiction issues are automatically assumed to reflect on parenting capacity
• gender bias about mental health, addiction and parenting
• lack of universal coercive control assessment in mental health and addiction

They explore strategies for improving clinical practice including assessing how current coercive control is impacting access to treatment. They discuss how important it is to recontextualize survivors' issues back perpetrator's patterns of behavior. David & Ruth examine the implications of documentation and reporting to family court and child protection.
If you like this episode you might also like:
Season 2 Episode 19: Using the concepts of collaborative co-parenting to hold perpetrators more accountable in family court

Season 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes
Season 2 Episode 10: Trauma-informed is not the same as domestic violence-informed: A conversation about the intersection of domestic violence perpetration, mental health & addiction
Episode 30: 4 Ways the Concept of Trauma Bonding Works Against Survivors

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."