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Child emotional abuse is a misunderstood, insidious, and psychologically damaging form of child maltreatment, which can lead to low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior. We, as a state and as individuals, have the collective responsibility to promote strong and healthy families, thereby preventing child emotional abuse. To accomplish this, we must strengthen services that prevent child abuse and neglect and support children and families. And we must promote research, training, and public education to address the risk factors that can lead to child emotional abuse and to foster the factors that protect against it.  Download PCANY's Position Statement Preventing Child Emotional Abuse Prevent Child Abuse New York Advocates for:
Programs and activities, such as home visiting programs and parent mutual support self-help groups, hold potential for preventing child emotional abuse by offering education on childhood development, instruction on non-violent discipline methods, and methods on how to bond with and nurture children. However, such potential has largely been left untapped. Research must be devoted toward making such programs more effective in preventing child emotional abuse. Definition of Child Emotional Abuse Child emotional abuse does not leave immediate physical marks on the child. It instead damages the child’s feelings, self-worth, and cognitive abilities. Because the effects of child emotional abuse are hidden, there is significant variability and disagreement on its definition, prevalence, and severity. Compounding the confusion surrounding emotional abuse is that it is the least studied form of child maltreatment. Given such difficulties, Prevent Child Abuse New York endorses an “action-based” definition. The following categories of emotional abuse serve as a useful starting point:
Scope of Child Emotional Abuse In the year 2006, approximately 536 (.7 percent of all substantiated cases of maltreatment) children in New York were officially counted as victims of child emotional abuse. It is likely that such numbers greatly underestimate the problem of child emotional abuse, since most cases of emotional abuse likely remain unreported. Nature of Child Emotional Abuse Although scant research has been conducted on the causes of child emotional abuse, experts speculate that it occurs for many of the same reasons that physical abuse does. A single factor alone often does not lead to abuse; instead, parents are vulnerable to becoming involved in maltreatment when simple, everyday stresses in their lives build up or if they are unable to manage such stresses. Such stressors to parents include: fatigue, unemployment, poverty, social isolation, divorce, death, immaturity and inexperience, health crises, and mental health problems. Parents may also have diminished capacity for understanding or dealing with children, false ideas about children’s needs, and, in extreme cases, sadistic psychosis. Consequences of Child Emotional Abuse The consequences of child emotional abuse can be devastating and long-lasting, and include: increased risk for a lifelong pattern of depression, estrangement, anxiety, low self-esteem, inappropriate or troubled relationships, or a lack of empathy. During their childhood, victims may fail to thrive or their developmental progress may be halted. Further, research indicates that it is the emotional and psychological trauma associated with physical and sexual abuse that has the most detrimental impact on the development of children. One study indicated that 80 percent of respondents who had experienced sexual abuse in combination with physical and/or emotional abuse felt that the emotional abuse was most damaging in the long-term. Similar findings were confirmed by case studies of men allegedly sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by caregivers while in boarding school. Children may recover from the physical pain and injuries, but may have a more difficult time recovering from the degradation, humiliation, or breach of trust involved in child emotional abuse. |
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