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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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