Child emotional abuse through words in the theme of article “More than words: the association of childhood emotional abuse and suicidal behavior”, published by professor Rafael Moreno de Araújo, of the School of Medicine at Univates, in European Psychiatry, the most important publication in Psychiatry in Europe.

 

According to Moreno, his research shows that emotional abuse through words is the sort of child maltreatment that is most closely related to suicidal behaviour. “This is scary, as not much is said about child emotional abuse. Currently, the main focus is still sexual abuse and physical abuse. Very little relation between sexual abuse and suicides is found, whereas researches show no relation between suicides and physical abuse. So, we must be very careful with what we tell our children.” – says he.

 

According to his findings, the most common types of trauma are emotional neglect and emotional abuse, followed by physical abuse and physical neglect. About 70.000 people participated in study, and results show that sexual abuse was the less frequent type. “Suicidal behaviour was closely associated with childhood emotional abuse. Sexual abuse and emotional neglect were not closely associated with suicidal behaviour. In addition, emotional abuse was the main cause of attempts to commit suicide.” – explained Araújo.

 

He believes that these results will help with the prevention and treatment of the consequences of emotional abuse. Moreno is a professor and coordinator of the Medicine course at Univates. He teaches Psychology and Medicine, Psychiatric symptomatology and, in the future, Psychiatry.

 

The article was based on the dissertation he wrote for his Master of Health Sciences with emphasis in Neuroscience, from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PucRS), supervised by Professor Diogo Lara, PhD. Moreno is now a PhD student and is researching into the mental effects of hitting children during childhood as a way of punishment.

 

Author: Nicole Morás