TUESDAY, June 20 (HealthDay News) -- Young adults who were verbally abused in childhood report more dissociation, depression and other symptoms of maltreatment than those who were physically abused, and have symptoms on par with those who witnessed domestic violence or were sexually abused by a non-family member, according to a report in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Martin H. Teicher, M.D., Ph.D., of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and colleagues analyzed questionnaire data from 554 participants aged 18 to 22 about exposure to parental verbal aggression. The participants responded to advertisements for the study.
Verbal aggression by parents had moderate to large effect in terms of anxiety, dissociation, "limbic irritability," depression and anger-hostility. In addition, a combination of factors was often more damaging than each alone, with a combination of verbal abuse and domestic violence having a greater effect, particularly on dissociation, than sexual abuse by a family member.
"Parental verbal aggression was a potent form of maltreatment," the authors write. "Exposure to multiple forms of abuse was associated with very large effect sizes. Most maltreated children had been exposed to multiple types of abuse."
In an editorial, Marianne Z. Wamboldt, M.D., of the University of Colorado at Denver, and colleague David Reiss, M.D., caution that "suggestive as these findings are, they need replication in a longitudinal prospective research study in which careful measurement of parent/child relationships are conducted throughout childhood."
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Editorial
