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Verbal Abuse As Damaging As Physical Abuse To Children's Mental Health
- August 8, 2025
- Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
This old saying is just plain wrong, a new study argues.
Verbal abuse inflicted in childhood can harm a person’s future mental health as much as physical abuse, researchers reported Aug. 5 in the journal BMJ Open.
Verbal abuse increased by 64% a child’s likelihood of low mental well-being as an adult, while physical abused increased odds by 52%, researchers found.
Those who suffered both verbal and physical abuse had twice the risk of low mental well-being as adults, results show.
“The immediate consequences of physical abuse of children are often shocking with immediate and life course impacts on the victims’ health,” wrote the research team led by Mark Bellis, a professor of public health and behavior sciences at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K.
“Verbal abuse may not immediately manifest in ways that catch the attention of bystanders, clinicians or others in supporting services with a responsibility for safeguarding children,” the researchers continued. “However, as suggested here, some impacts may be no less harmful or protracted.”
Worldwide, about 1 in 6 children endures physical abuse from family or caregivers, which has been linked to depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, violence and serious health problems in adulthood, researchers said in background notes.
But verbal abuse also is a source of toxic stress that can affect the brain development of children, researchers noted. Further, it’s more common, with an estimated 1 in 3 children subjected to verbal abuse.
To see how this abuse might harm children’s future mental health, researchers tracked more than 20,600 kids born in England and Wales from the 1950s onward.
Results show that cases of physical abuse dropped from around 20% in children born from 1950 to 1979 to 10% in those born in 2000 or after.
However, verbal abuse has increased, rising from around 12% of children born before 1950 to nearly 20% of those born in 2000 or after.
Researchers also found that verbal abuse was as damaging to the psyche as physical abuse.
About 24% of kids subjected to verbal abuse had low mental well-being as adults, compared to nearly 23% of those physically abused and 29% of those subjected to both verbal and physical abuse, the study says.
By comparison, only 16% of children who suffered no abuse wound up with low mental well-being as adults.
Adults with low mental well-being were less likely to feel optimistic, useful, relaxed or close to other people, researchers said. They also had trouble dealing with problems, thinking clearly or being able to make up their own minds.
In nearly all cases, verbal abuse affected these individual markers of well-being more dramatically than physical abuse, results show.
For example, physical abuse in childhood increased an adult’s odds of not feeling close to others by 33%, but verbal abuse increased the odds by 90%, the study says. Adults were 2.7 times as likely to never or rarely feel close to others if they’d suffered both verbal and physical abuse.
“Despite political and public focus on physical violence and abuse of children, results here suggest child verbal abuse may have consequences for mental well-being of a similar magnitude,” researchers concluded. “Even when physical abuse is part of the individuals’ childhood experiences, those that also experience verbal abuse are exposed to an additional risk.”
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about child abuse and neglect.
SOURCES: BMJ Open, Aug. 5, 2025; BMJ, news release, Aug. 5, 2025
