Strength at Home Couples (SAH-C) — Preventing Partner Violence Among Military Veterans

Strength at Home Couples (SAH-C) is a 12-session, manualised group therapy programme developed by researchers at the VA Boston Healthcare System and the National Center for PTSD. It adapts cognitive-behavioural and PTSD-informed treatment techniques to directly target intimate partner violence (IPV) risk among military veterans and active-duty service members, a population found to have elevated rates of partner violence linked to combat-related trauma, anger and hyperarousal symptoms.
A randomised controlled trial (Taft et al., 2016, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology) assigned 69 couples to SAH-C or a supportive-prevention control condition. At 12-month follow-up, the relative risk of physical intimate partner violence perpetrated by male service members/veterans was 0.53 in the SAH-C group compared with the control group, and female partners' relative risk of victimisation was 0.43; treatment completion was also significantly higher in the SAH-C condition (RR 1.73). The US National Institute of Justice's CrimeSolutions registry independently reviewed this evidence and rated the programme 'Promising' — the middle of its three-tier rating scale, reflecting a single well-conducted trial rather than a broader replicated evidence base.
The programme has since been tested in a second randomised trial on a US military installation and is delivered within Veterans Affairs mental-health services, but published evidence remains limited to a modest sample size and US veteran populations; no published cost-effectiveness analysis was identified, and broader replication outside VA/military settings has not yet been documented.

Read the full analysis: https://div12.org/preventing-interpersonal-violence-among-military-veterans-the-strength-at-home-program/