Verbally abused children more likely to have poor mental health as adults, study finds
Analysis suggests long-term damage to wellbeing can be worse than for children experiencing physical abuse
Some of us were lucky enough to get both kinds!
It hurts me more than it hurts you!
I am doing this for your own good!
Do both at the same time by getting your kids to go pick the switch (young, thin tree branch that’s still bendy) that they’re going to be whipped with!
-a huge portion of southern parents
Had a weeping willow tree in the front yard. Been there done that!
My mom would threaten to have my sibling pick the switch. Never actually did, but the threat was there. She told us that her parents would actually do it, implying we should be grateful she was a gentler parent.
I remember this! My sister's legs were bleeding.
All boils down to chronic anxiety. Verbally abusing your kids raises their anxiety and stunts their development.
Similarly, children who are chronically bullied by their neighbors, perpetually harassed by the local police or mall security, abused by child care workers, or subject to an anxious environment (malnutrition, chronic illness, unreliable/impoverished caretakers, war-time violence and social conditions) develop poor mental health into adulthood.
On the flip side, adults who are sleep deprived, impoverished, overworked, subject to harassment from police or debt collectors, terrified by social panics and media-driven hysterias, and deprived of basic health care for themselves or those in their care will show more signs of their own stress and mental well-being. That can often manifest in a short temper, angry outbursts, fits of depression or anxious sobbing, and emotional neglect towards those around them.
Stabilize the life and well-being of the caregivers and you can often radically improve the quality of life of the children in their care.
Furthermore, the prevalence of physical abuse halved from about 20% among those born between 1950 and 1979 to 10% among participants born in or after 2000. However, for verbal abuse, the prevalence increased from 12% among those born before 1950 to about 20% among those born in 2000 or later.
“Any gains made in reducing physical abuse risk being undone by rising rates of verbal abuse. We must act now to confront the lasting harm caused by cruel, critical or controlling language. We need to build children up – not knock them down. The mental health of the next generation and our shared future depend on it.”
Both my parents were physically and mentally abusive. When I was around 16, I was too big for my mom to hurt me much, and I was almost on par with my dad, so them being physically violent was reduced, as it started to be consequential for them. Nothing ever stopped them from being cruel, manipulative, or spiteful to me.
I think it's a lot easier to justify to one's self that you aren't abusing someone when you aren't physically hurting them. They're "just words" after all. But when I wasn't being hit, it was mostly over. It still sucked that I knew I couldn't trust them, but without active physical assault, not much is going on. But when you tear into a person's conscious and subconscious, I always thought that stuff keeps hurting long after the action is done. I remember just a handful of times I was hurt physically really bad, but some of the hate and insults from 20-30 years ago still have effects on me from time to time.
I got help for my depression a few years back now, and have largely moved on, but what was done to me absolutely has left lifelong issues for me. All you others in this thread that have been through similar, I hope you're all at least doing alright today. None of us deserved what we got taken out on us.
I remember a speaker from when I was about 11-12 doing an assembly about the power of words. They used a metaphor of a plank of wood, and every insult is a hole drilled into it - it doesn't go away.
The intent was to reduce bullying, but I remember walking away thinking, "I must have nothing but wood shavings left over by now."
I'm sorry you went through what you did. Some things truly never leave you.
Kids really can go through a lot and everyone just acts like we have to move on. In a way that's true, as it's the only real option, but people that went through stuff didn't ask for it.
Me and my brother still don't get why our parents ever had us. We just got treated like big inconveniences and they fought with each other and just sucked us into their misery.
I'm as far past stuff as possible now, like in your analogy, what's done is done, and I'm better than I was at my worst, but it really grinds me and my brother that they will never acknowledge they should have been better for us. It's like, you did this to us, and while you can't fix it, you're still blaming us for not being what we could have, but you guys were the ones tearing us down our whole lives.
They get all upset when we go a long time without talking, but I say you didn't want us when we were there and needed you. Now we're on our own and you're upset you don't have a more inclusive role in our lives? We were forced to live without you, other than being scared of you, be glad you get this much.
Ugh, I forget what my point was, but I liked your story. 😂. Wood shavings gang unite!
Sorry your parents suck
They've mellowed out a bit and I can see them a few times a year, but we'll never be close. It's very odd seeing my girlfriend's family be so close with each other, especially as they tend to get loud and argumentative, but still like each other a lot. It just confuses my brain.
Me and my brother are close though, and I have some good friends and a great girlfriend, so I have the family I want in a way. It's not the same, but I make it work.
No shit
Well yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Abuse causes mental health problems. How is this news?
Because science isnt based on "A-duh-doy".
It’s for the boomers still in denial about how bad they fucked up their kids.
And everything else.
They ain't done either... Economic abuse is happening as we speak and it will continue for another 2 decades.
More so proof than shocking revelation, most likely.
Would visit my dad every other weekend and occasionally get a light smack on the back of the head and be called an idiot. Go "home" to a stepfather that wouldn't use my name, it was idiot, moron, jerk off, etc...
Now I work in a factory because I never felt I had the capacity to aim for anything and often "joke" about how Hitler had more redeeming qualities than I do.
Headline checks out. Lol
I relate to this. I didn’t have many people I could rely on growing up, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. It left me with a lot of doubt about myself and about others. I often wonder who I might’ve been if genuine human connection had come more naturally, if I hadn’t learned to see myself in such a harsh light.
Now I work in a factory because I never felt I had the capacity to aim for anything
Having no motivation is still my biggest drag on myself. I still don't feel I deserve things, and I feel I've lost a lot of the ability to really even want things, so if I can't set goals or have desires, it's hard to find that ambition. I used to have lots of dreams, but my parents pushed them out of me. My life now is...fine...but I don't know if it will ever be what young and innocent me would have wanted for me.
What is it about dads that leave thinking smacks are a good tool? Mine would call it "showing the love" and whenever he thought i was a nuisance he thought it was cute to hit me until i hit him back while he was driving and couldn't understand it.
But as for what we do for work and what we do with our lives do not blame solely on yourself as this world is not tame or easy. Failing is the default state but you still always have the ability as a human to adjust your environment. Even if just a little. Its ok to not change the whole world cause your changes do change the world around you.
I wonder how much of this overlaps with Sunday sermons. Surely all those "you're going to hell" messages classify as verbal abuse in this case.
I would say absolutely yes. I went to a Pentecostal Baptist church as a child and the hellfire and brimstone messaging was very strong and scary.
The selfloathing and fear is still getting to me after 20 years. Christianity is a death cult and i am happy i got out.
Spiritual abuse is the term you're looking for, it's actually separate but overlapping with verbal abuse.
I was lucky to get both physical and verbal abuse from my family, so I’m just a grown up mess now.
I am glad to see the studies come out that validate these experiences on a more empirical level.
I read a comment recently explaining that a child's nervous system cannot differentiate between pain or threat of pain inflicted due to discipline or pain or threat of pain inflicted due to abuse and honestly that changed something in my head. Like. It doesn't matter if the kid knows they have done something wrong and understands that there's a punishment as a result. The nervous system cannot tell the difference.
i heard a great phrase that goes "i continue to cut but it's still too short"
i feel it's an abstract but highly accurate metaphor for how many raise their children. they're trying to be even more strict to make the child behave well, but that inflicts even more damage on the child and the child misbehaves even more.
And then their kids grow up with parents that don't make a sound when they move around the house (developed skill to not be noticed and subsequently harassed/abused) and they develop hyper vigilance and have to try re-learn how to relax when living on their own.
Damn, that's me. I'm a big boy, but i move so silently that i scare the shit outta my wife on the regular when i appear next to her. i also cannot relax if i can't see all people and exits in the room. More than a one-on-one meeting sucks ass because the more people there are, the less i can keep a person under observation to make sure i'm safe from mood swings.
That's exhausting and so i just avoid it if possible. In public i am nothing without my noise cancelling headphones; worst experience i can have is a mess hall where everyone speaks because i just can't stop listening if someone's voice becomes threatening, so my mind tries to listen to a thousand conversations at once. I'd rather go hungry lol
My father never acknowledged what he did to me before he died; but i'm pretty sure he had similar issues and coped by drinking. I am very relaxed and a very social guy when drunk, so at least he serves as a warning for me to not rely on that crutch. he drank himself to death after everyone fled from his choleric drunkenness, i will not share the same fate.
Break the cycle.
Use your parents skills and your hyper vigilance to instead make something better.
It's time for you to have kids and start a new ninja clan 🥷
Can confirm
Can confirm.
Oooohh. That explains it.
Another study to state the obvious!
Sometimes it is useful to document the obvious.
Very much this. Especially when you need to inoculate the public against far right propaganda that will soon become "common sense." Why should anybody be able to tell you how to raise your kid?
Parental Rights are Constitutionally Established and Deeply Rooted in the Supreme Law of the Land
If you're in the U.S. and don't know who AFPI is, you might want to look into them.
Oh yeah, well you're just like your father!
Taken from the esteemed medical journal "Duh Weekly"
Can confirm...
That's why you ain't never gonna be shit, boy
I'll show you. I'm gonna be so much shit
You don't say.
Ikr? Called my kid a useless pos would effect him how would have guessed.
Checking in ✋
Is there a comparison to physical abuse? I'd be interested in which would be the worse way of upbringing.
I'd imagine physical abuse ends once the child is big enough to fight back or move out. Verbal and emotional abuse are more insidious and the child may, in my experience, be deep into adulthood before they put an end to it.
It's easy to point at "my mom broke my arm for acting up" and see it as abuse, compared to "my mom told me my behavior is the reason I can't have friends over, so I only see my friends at school. For the last 5 years."
I'd also be curious to see a paper comparing the effects of different sorts of abuse.
I’m glad that verbal abuse is getting the spotlight it deserves, but we should include emotional abuse too. I’ve always heard about verbal about but not emotional abuse.
No way
Indeed.
I can attest to that.
"I don't gotta like ya, I just have to love ya."
yup
Yep+1
:o