A Yale study reveals veterans may experience bidirectional intimate partner violence (IPV) at higher rates than active-duty service members.
The results, published in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, followed a review by Yale researchers of published literature that tracks bidirectional IPV among veterans and service members.
Bidirectional or mutual IPV occurs when both partners use violence in a relationship.
The researchers compared rates of bidirectional IPV and associations between IPV use (i.e., perpetration) and experience (i.e., victimization) by military status, either active duty or veteran. They found 21 unique studies that reported either bidirectional IPV rates or correlations using data from either service members or veterans between 2011 and July 3, 2025.
Six studies contained data from service members, 14 studies contained data from veterans, and one study contained data from both service members and veterans, according to the study. Notably, the study containing data from both service members and veterans reported all results aggregated by currently military affiliation.
Studies varied considerably in their measurement and operationalization of bidirectional IPV, warranting the need for future research to examine rates and correlations of bidirectional IPV using data from service members and veterans in the same study.
An analysis of the data revealed that rates of overall bidirectional IPV were higher in veterans (28.4 to 66.9%) than service members (25%).
“Results from this study suggest that veterans may have higher rates of bidirectional intimate partner violence than their service member counterparts, although this finding should be interpreted with caution, given differences in measurement and sampling across studies,” said Elizabeth Coppola, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at Yale School of Medicine, and the paper’s first author.
“None of the studies in our sample examined rates of bidirectional intimate partner violence with data from service members and veterans who participated in the same study, highlighting a critical gap in the literature,” she said. “Nevertheless, high rates of bidirectional IPV were documented among service members and veterans, underscoring the need for treatment- and prevention-based resources, supports, and services to identify and treat service members and veterans with bidirectional intimate partner violence.”
Carla Stover, PhD, professor at Child Study Center, is the senior author. Additional Yale contributors include Galina Portnoy, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry; Mark Relyea, PhD, associate research scientist in psychiatry; and Cynthia Brandt, MD, MPH, professor of biomedical informatics and data science. Contributors at the Veterans Health Administration include Julie Yeterian, PhD, and Lauren DeMoss, MS.
This research was supported by a VA Health Services Research Career Development Award (CDA 19-234 awarded to Dr. Galina Portnoy) and by the IPV Center for Implementation, Research, and Evaluation. Coppola’s time was supported by the Advanced Fellowship in Medical Informatics through the VA Office of Academic Affiliations.