A new study finds that emotional abuse is just as harmful as physical or sexual abuse
- so why is no one talking about this?
Hey guys, Tara here for Dnews - and anyone who’s not a complete monster knows just
what kind of scars sexual and physical abuse can leave on a child.
But something that’s rarely, if ever talked about - is psychological abuse.
There are no laws against it, no billboards on the side of the highway.
And yet the American Academy of Pediatrics says it’s “the most challenging and prevalent
form of child abuse and neglect.”
So why aren’t we addressing this issue with the same fervency we give to other more, visible
kinds of abuse?
Well, part of that may be a simple lack of awareness.
Until now, most of the studies on this subject, have specifically looked at the long-term
effects of sexual or physical abuse.
But according to a new study, children who are emotionally abused or neglected can develop
similar and sometimes even worse mental health problems than kids who are sexually or physically
abused.
For this study, researchers analyzed data from 5,616 children with lifetime histories
of physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment, or a combination thereof.
Maltreatment in this case was defined as either abuse or neglect inflicted by a caretaker
- so things like bullying, threats, severe insults, isolation, etc.
What they found, is that a staggering number of children - 62% - had a history of psychological
maltreatment, and 24% of the cases they studied, were exclusively related to psychological
maltreatment.
They also found that children who were victims of psychological maltreatment, suffered from
anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal tendencies - at
the same rate - and in some cases, an even greater rate - than children who were physically
or sexually abused.
Especially worrisome, is the fact that of the three kinds of abuse, psychological maltreatment
specifically has the highest association with depression, anxiety, attachment issues, and
substance abuse.
So clearly, this is not an issue we should just be brushing off.
According to the US Children’s Bureau, nearly 3 million U.S. children experience some form
of maltreatment every year.
But as the lead author of this study, Joseph Spinazzola, points out - there are no physical
wounds associated with psychological abuse.
So child protective case workers have a particularly hard time recognizing it.
He also brings up the point that emotional abuse just doesn’t carry the same social
taboo as physical or sexual abuse, even though it’s equally, if not more, damaging to a
child’s mental health.
As such, our primary goal, he says, should be to implement more public awareness initiatives
to “help people understand just how harmful psychological maltreatment is for children
and adolescents.”
While we’re on the topic of children, I wanna remind all of you guys watching this,
that I host another show here at Discovery called TestTube - that’s a lot like Dnews,
but more geared towards current events.
Yesterday I did an episode on the secret pro-life agenda of Crisis Pregnancy Centers[a], and
how many of them have been deliberately misleading women with false information and facts about
abortions.
So if you’d like to learn more about that topic, just head over to youtube.com/testtubenetwork.