TRANSCRIPT
Australian children are facing more emotional abuse than ever before.
New research reveals it has become the most common form of child abuse in the country, and yet, only half of Australians would report their concerns about suspected child abuse to authorities.
Chief executive of Act for Kids, Dr Katrina Lines believes there is a critical need to shed more light on this type of abuse and its impact on children in the country.
“Emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse, yet it often goes unnoticed or unreported. Emotional abuse is one of the five recognised forms of child maltreatment, so it's really important to raise awareness as the signs and symptoms might not be as obvious as physical abuse or neglect.”
Emotional abuse is a pattern of behaviours that damage a child’s sense of self-worth, impacting their emotional development including but not limited to, constant yelling, swearing, insulting, criticizing, threatening, calling a child hurtful names or shaming them.
The study by Act for Kids shows this type of abuse is the most common type of maltreatment with 57 per cent of the 45,400 Australian children surveyed, confirming to have experienced abuse between 2022 and 2023, and over half of respondents aged 14-17 years witnessed emotional abuse at school.
The research also reveals that 87 per cent of Australians agree emotional abuse is a serious problem in Australia, however, nine out of ten underestimate the prevalence of childhood maltreatment.
And one in five Australians do not recognize that withholding love and affection is a form of emotional abuse.
Dr Kaye Pickering, Executive Director of Service Operations at Act for Kids says the study is alarming as emotional abuse can have long term negative impacts on the overall well-being of children.
"Emotional abuse can affect children for their entire lives. It damages self esteem and their ability to see themselves as worthy. It can impact their performance at school, if children are constantly being told that they're not good enough, or they're being fed negative information about themselves and being put down and shamed, that can impact their ability to actually do well at school, and that, in turn, can impact the sorts of jobs they get and the education level they go to. It can also create anxiety and depression, which can stay with kids for, you Know, a very long time or throughout their lives."
The Australian Child Maltreatment Study conducted in 2023/2024 reveals that 30.9 per cent of Australian children experience emotional abuse before the age of 18.
ACMS is a landmark Australian study of the prevalence of child maltreatment in the country.
David Lawrence, a professor of mental health and a contributor to the The Australian Child Maltreatment Study says the report revealed that the impact of sexual abuse is similar to that of emotional abuse.
"We found that people had experienced sexual abuse and people that experienced emotional abuse in particular were most likely to go on to experience depression, PTSD, anxiety, self harming and substance use throughout life, and when we looked at what is the relative contribution of each of the types of maltreatment, we found that emotional abuse and sexual abuse were almost exactly equal in terms of their strength of association with poor risk factor outcomes across their life course."
Professor Daryl Higgins, Director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University says the ACMS report shows that emotional abuse is a major contributor to Australia's mental health crisis, therefore early prevention is important.
He says the government needs to act swiftly.
"We have to stop pretending that child maltreatment is this inevitable thing that we just sent ambulances to the bottom of the cliff and clear up the mess once children have been referred to a statutory child protection department - that's too little and too late. We actually have to drive a Prevention Agenda and use those strategies that we know work, such as giving parents access to evidence based parenting programs and supports to lean into those trusted sources of information, such as teachers and doctors and early childhood educators to be able to send messages around what works and to help and support parents to do the best job they can of raising children in ways that are caring and emotion focused and are not harmful."
Dr Lines believes it is everybody's responsibility and not just the government to protect children in the community and look out for signs of emotional abuse and address it.
"Sadly, between 45,000 and 50,000 children are substantiated for abuse in Australia every year. That's enough kids to fill Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. To raise awareness about how many kids are affected by child maltreatment, Act for kids is launching the stadium of hope during Child Protection Week. So this is a first initiative encouraging the community to come together, purchase virtual seats and fill the stadium of hope for a united show of support for Australia's children. We are urging people to help by purchasing a virtual seat for $10 each, with all the money raised going to children and families who have experienced harm. "
