https://doi.org/10.31261/CHOWANNA.2002.18.07
Among the four main types of maltreatment described in the literature — physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse — the most serious definitional issues, and thus difficulties in formulating a concept for intervention purposes, concern emotional abuse. It is perceived both as a dimension of abuse that accompanies all other types and as a form of harm that can occur independently. Emotional abuse includes behaviors that are psychologically destructive (harmful) to a child's functioning in behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physical domains. Neglect involves the absence of certain parental actions or behaviors aimed at protecting the child from harm, danger, or illness. It includes situations where basic care and support are not provided in the areas of emotional connection, supervision, nourishment, safety, education, as well as a lack of appropriate external stimuli and adequate environmental conditions. These four categories of abuse often co-occur, creating a discouragingly complex, multidimensional, and multilayered issue for a potential therapist. It is no surprise that the range of possible interventions that may be applied in such cases is broad and varied. Whatever other factors may be involved, emotional abuse is "supported" by parental indifference, which reflects and exposes a deeply rooted emotional rejection of the child. The interactions between different types of abuse are not sufficiently understood, making it difficult to resolve many issues related to this complex psychosocial problem, and consequently to develop a coherent intervention plan. Another complicating factor is the lack of sufficient clinical trials, meaning that empirically supported therapeutic recommendations cannot be fully trusted. The primary focus of attention is the perpetrator of the abuse. In no way can treatment of the child be effective or meaningful without a change in the behavior and attitudes of the parents. S. T. Azar, M. M. Ferrare, and S. J. Brenton argue that, because they carry direct risks for the child, interventions in families where abuse is present must initially focus on deficits in parenting skills, aggressive and rejecting behaviors (e.g., instilling a sense of responsibility, using positive guidance strategies, communication), stress management, emotional regulation, and cognitively based strategies (e.g., problem-solving, reframing, cognitive restructuring of perceptions of the child's behavior).
Download files
Citation rules
Cited by / Share
Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
Vol. 1 No. 18 (2002)
Published: 2025-08-18
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
English
Język Polski