Face-to-Face to Email to HELPP Zone App: Delivering Intervention in Intimate Partner Violence

Purpose: To compare the effectiveness of HELPP (Health, Education on safety, and Legal Participant Preferred) intervention among three groups of participants experiencing IPV: online, face-face and waitlist controls.

Methods:  A sequential transformative design in mixed methods was used. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three study groups (Online (ONL [n=11]), Face-to-Face (FTF [n=10]) and Waitlist Control (WLC [n=11]) by permuted block randomization after informed consent process and baseline testing were completed. Researchers were blinded to treatment allocation.

Results: The HELPP intervention was offered to a sample 32 female participants experiencing IPV who were predominantly Asian 45.2% (n=14), 32.3% (n=7) were White, 22.5% (n=10) Black and on average 40 years of age. Primary outcomes were anxiety, depression, anger, personal support, and social support. Secondary outcomes were IPV experience <18 years old, experience of pain, and 4 types of social support: tangible, appraisal, belonging, self-esteem (TABS) social support. The qualitative data analysis will be excluded from this presentation. Sixty-five percent of the 20 participants experienced IPV before age 18 years. The Anxiety, depression, anger, personal resource and social support mean scores pretest to posttest differences were significant for ONL (p<0.001).

Conclusions: The HELPP intervention was instrumental in decreasing participants’ feelings of anxiety, depression, and anger and increasing personal support and social support with significant reported improvements in the ONL group. The acceptability of online intervention, specifically email-delivered HELPP intervention was shown to be feasible and effective compared to waitlist controls. Further research may determine whether email alone or combined with mobile devices could also be used to deliver intervention in IPV survivors.