Folks get all sorts of sensitive when it comes to outsiders telling them how to discipline their kids. From experts to family that "mean well," everyone's got an opinion.

Well, this video is not about disciplining children or trying to control parents. It’s about cruelty. It’s about the type of abuse that no one wants to talk about. Many don’t understand that it comes with serious consequences.

Transcript:

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A new study finds that emotional abuse is just as harmful as physical or sexual abuse. So why is no one talking about this? Hey guys, it's Tara here for D-News, and anyone who's not a complete monster knows just what kind of scars sexual and physical abuse can leave on a child.

But something that's rarely ever talked about is psychological abuse. There are no laws against it, no billboards on the side of the highway. And yet the American Academy of Pediatrics says it's the most challenging and prevalent form of child abuse and neglect. So why aren't we addressing this issue with the same fervency we give to other, more visible kinds of abuse? Well, part of that may be a simple lack of awareness. Up until now most of the studies on this subject have specifically looked at the long term effects of sexual or physical abuse.

But according to a new study, children who are emotionally abused or neglected can develop similar and sometimes even worse mental health problems than kids who are sexually or physically abused. For this study researchers analyzed data from 5616 children with lifetime histories of physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment or some combination thereof. Maltreatment in this case was defined as either abuse or neglect inflicted by a caretaker. So things like bullying, threats, severe insults, isolation etc.

What they found is that a staggering number of children, 62%, had a history of psychological maltreatment. And 24% of the cases they studied were exclusively related to psychological maltreatment. They also found that children who were victims of this kind of maltreatment suffered from anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal tendencies at the same rate, and in some cases at an even greater rate, than children who were physically or sexually abused.

Especially worrisome is the fact that of the three kinds of abuse, psychological maltreatment specifically has the highest association with depression, anxiety, attachment issues and substance abuse. So clearly this is not an issue we should just be brushing off. According to the US Children's Bureau, nearly 3 million US children experience some form of maltreatment every year. But as the lead author of this study, Joseph Spinazzola, points out, there are no physical wounds associated with psychological abuse. So child protective case workers have a particularly hard time recognizing it.

He also brings up the point that emotional abuse just doesn't carry the same social taboo as physical or sexual abuse, even though it's equally if not more, damaging to a child's mental health. As such, our primary goal, he says, should be to implement more public awareness initiatives to help people understand just how harmful psychological maltreatment is for children and adolescents. While we're on the topic of children, I want to remind all of you guys watching this that I host another show here at Discovery called TestTube, that's a lot like D-News, but more geared towards current events. Yesterday I did an episode on the secret pro-life agenda of crisis pregnancy centers, and how many of them have been deliberately misleading women with false information and facts about abortions. They're also keeping women from finding out about all of their options and showing them inaccurate or misleading films or pictures in order to shock or frighten them out of seeking those options.

In the meantime feel free to let us know in the comments below what you think of this study, and remember all the links we discuss here on the show can be found right down there in the video description. That's it for me, but as always, thank you guys for watching.

There may be small errors in this transcript.

About:

This informative clip was produced by Discovery News, which you can also scope out on Facebook. While this video doesn’t give specific signs of emotional abuse, if you think it’s something you might be experiencing or inflicting, don’t be scared to touch base with a therapist.

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• Parenting