Emotional Maltreatment
Emotional maltreatment is a challenging topic in today’s society, especially in child development studies. From the video, it is clear that emotional abuse equally poses the same or even more significant problems than sexual and physical abuse. Exposing a child to negligence, shame, coercion, isolation, and bullying by a parent or guardian are very distressing. Emotional stability is a driving factor for a happy child, which in essence promotes growth and development. Emotional maltreatment is positively associated with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, low self-esteem, physical harm, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Emotional maltreatment is way worse than abuse. Physical scars heal, but emotional scars and remain forever.
Altering behavior within the family microsystem is one of the strategies used by state policymakers in treating child abuse and reducing the potential occurrence of the same. This strategy uses several approaches, such as; Parental enhancement, which aims at changing the behavior of abusive parents through new training programs. It focuses on child management and childcare through effective discipline, self-control measures such as anger management, parent-child relations, nutrition, treating alcoholism, home safety, health maintenance, vocational skills training, and financial management.
The National Research Council (1993) ascertains that parental training highly reduces parental distress and, at the same time, improves child functioning. Additionally, family system treatment is quite therapeutic as it changes the psychosocial interaction of the family members. Combining individual therapy and group therapy can be quite useful, especially in families that depict high dysfunctionality. In instances where child abuse is highly coupled with poverty, child protection services offer family income and supplemental benefits such as rent subsidies, school lunch programs, Women’s infant food programs, etc. Home-based services and family preservation services have also proven effective in handling child abuse by eliminating the unnecessary need for foster home care. Training parents goes hand in hand with long-term follow-ups to ensure that change is adopted in abusive homes. This approach strengthens family bonds, therefore, promoting child psychological wellness.