Verbal Abuse as Damaging as Physical Abuse to Children’s Mental Health

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This old saying is just plain wrong, a new study argues.

Verbal abuse inflicted in childhood can harm a person’s future mental health as much as physical abuse, researchers reported in the journal BMJ Open.

Verbal abuse increased by 64% a child’s likelihood of low mental well-being as an adult, while physical abuse increased the odds by 52%, researchers found.

Those who suffered both verbal and physical abuse had twice the risk of low mental well-being as adults, results show.

“The immediate consequences of physical abuse of children are often shocking with immediate and life-course impacts on the victims’ health,” wrote the research team led by Mark Bellis, a professor of public health and behavior sciences at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K.

“Verbal abuse may not immediately manifest in ways that catch the attention of bystanders, clinicians, or others in supporting services with a responsibility for safeguarding children,” the researchers continued. “However, as suggested here, some impacts may be no less harmful or protracted.”

To see how verbal abuse might harm children’s future mental health, researchers tracked more than 20,600 kids born in England and Wales from the 1950s onward. Results show that cases of physical abuse dropped from around 20% in children born from 1950 to 1979 to 10% in those born in 2000 or after.

However, verbal abuse has increased, rising from around 12% of children born before 1950 to nearly 20% of those born in 2000 or after.

Researchers also found that verbal abuse was as damaging to the psyche as physical abuse.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/child-health/verbal-abuse-as-damaging-as-physical-abuse-to-childrens-mental-health