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Sticks and
stones may break my bones,
But names will never hurt me. …
That often repeated children’s
rhyme is wrong, according to Harvard University
psychiatrists. Scolding, swearing, yelling,
blaming, insulting, threatening, ridiculing,
demeaning, and criticizing can be as harmful
as physical abuse, sexual abuse outside the
home, or witnessing physical abuse at home,
notes a report in the April issue of the Harvard
Mental Health Letter.
The report suggests that, when
verbal abuse is constant and severe, it creates
a risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, the
same type of psychological collapse experienced
by combat troops in Iraq. The research on which
the report is based points out that children
who are the target of frequent verbal mistreatment
exhibit higher rates of physical aggression,
delinquency, and social problems than other
children.
Many studies tie physical and
sexual abuse to lasting effects on the brain
and behavior, but emotional mistreatment has
not received the same focus. “Exposure
to verbal aggression has received little attention
as a specific form of abuse,” notes Martin
Teicher, associate professor of psychiatry at
McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric
facility. “This despite the fact that
one national study found that 63 percent of
American parents reported one or more instances
of verbal aggression, such as swearing at and
insulting their child.”
Other researchers have associated
childhood verbal abuse with a significantly
higher risk of developing unstable, angry personalities,
narcissistic behavior, obsessive-compulsive
disorders, and paranoia. “Verbal abuse
may also have more lasting consequences than
other forms of abuse, because it’s often
more continuous,” says Teicher. “And
in combination with physical abuse and neglect
[it] may produce the most dire outcome. However,
child protective service agencies, doctors,
and lawyers are most concerned about the impact
and prevention of physical or sexual abuse.”
This situation prodded Teicher
and three colleagues — Jacqueline Samson,
Ann Polcari, and Cynthia McGreenery —
to do a study comparing the impact of childhood
verbal abuse in both the presence and absence
of physical and sexual abuse and exposure to
family violence.
Badgering vs. battering
They recruited 554 young people, aged 18 to
22 years, who responded to advertisements. About
half were women and most were white. They all
filled out questionnaires about unhappy childhoods
and verbal abuse.
Typical of the respondents was
Angela, an 18-year-old college freshman who
enrolled in the study after seeing a subway
car advertisement for people who had an unhappy
childhood. “This is the first time I have
thought about these things in years,”
she said, “and the first time I have talked
about it.”
Verbal abuse, the researchers
found, had as great an effect as physical or
nondomestic sexual mistreatment. Verbal aggression
alone turns out to be a particularly strong
risk factor for depression, anger-hostility,
and dissociation disorders. The latter involve
cutting off a particular mental function from
the rest of the mind. In one type of dissociation,
the person can’t recall part of his or
her personal history. Other types involve hallucinations,
feeling unreal or unstable, unconsciously converting
painful emotions into physical symptoms, and
multiple personalities.
“Our findings raise the
possibility that exposure to verbal aggression
may affect the development of certain vulnerable
brain regions in susceptible individuals,”
Teicher’s group warns. “Alternatively,
such exposure in childhood may put into force
a powerful negative model for interpersonal
relationships.” Possible consequences
could include insecure attachments to others,
negative feelings about oneself in relation
to others, poor social functioning, and lowered
self-esteem and coping strategies. Worse, says,
Teicher, “such possibilities are not mutually
exclusive.”
As yet unpublished research
by Teicher shows that, indeed, exposure to verbal
abuse does affect certain areas of the brain.
These areas are associated with changes in verbal
IQ and symptoms of depression, dissociation,
and anxiety.
Violence at home
The effects of verbal abuse were worse than
witnessing serious domestic violence and as
serious as sexual abuse outside the home, but
not as bad as sexual abuse by a family member.
Of 54 people in the study who witnessed domestic
violence, 35 saw their mothers being threatened
or assaulted. Twenty-three witnessed brothers
and sisters being physically mistreated. Thirteen
of these attacks involved severe beatings.
It is possible, the team points
out, “that exposure to domestic emotional,
physical, or sexual abuse is greatest in families
with mental illness. Thus, genetic factors could
contribute to the higher symptom scores we found
in subjects exposed to domestic abuse.”
On the other hand, they note
that the overall degree of psychological problems
they found is probably lower for their college-educated,
mainly upper middle-class subjects than it would
be for the population in general.
The take-home message is that
occasional harsh or angry words are not going
to traumatize a child for life. However, frequent
verbal bashing could be as bad as sticks and
stones that break their bones.
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