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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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