Can Doctors Screen Men for Domestic Violence?

Article here. Excerpt:

'But the Michigan study, published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, goes further than just reporting the top numbers. The authors of the report dissect male domestic violence as if it were a disease. In this view, surprising comparisons arise: Male violence against partners is more common than diabetes.

So if domestic violence is a disease, can doctors identify it in the patient? The Michigan study sought to correlate domestic violence with other health outcomes. Compared to the males who didn't commit such acts, those who reported violence against a partner were more likely to report symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and insomnia.

It would be wrong to take these findings and declare that men with irritable bowels are more likely to commit domestic-violence crimes. The paper concludes that these may be caused by either substance abuse or a history of childhood violence (which two out of three perpetrators reported experiencing). So it's not that irritable bowels cause domestic violence. It's that the two may be related to the same psychological or biological cause. These are all just clues doctors may use in discovering who may be most likely to cause harm.'