Study: Yelling at children can be as harmful as physical, sexual abuse

on the health watch tonight a new study finds that screaming at kids can be as harmful as other forms of child abuse Dr mikica Marshall joins us now and doctor this type of adult behavior is actually more common than we think yeah you know physical abuse and sexual abuse of kids has been on the

decline which is great but unfortunately there's been a rise in emotional abuse including verbal assaults one problem is that verbal abuse has never really been considered its own form of child abuse and some people think it really should so researchers in the US and in the UK reviewed 166 earlier studies and they

found that yelling at denigrating or verbally threatening children by parents teachers or coaches can be as damaging as physical or sexual abuse it can cause depression and anger and substance abuse issues physical problems such as obesity so people are saying look if we recognize verbal abuse as its own form of child abuse we can get greater

prevention efforts underway and really teach adults how important it is when you speak to a child to be supportive and nurturing and really good idea to put it on the radar so people understand just how bad it can be