CHILD EMOTIONAL ABUSE

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The second thing about the definition is that the abuse usually needs to happen over a period of time for the harm to be caused. A single isolated verbal outburst from a parent is unlikely to constitute emotional abuse. That doesn’t mean that each single incident doesn’t cause harm – but the harm has to be significant to be abuse.

Most normal healthy families will encounter single incidents of emotional abuse and will manage them as unacceptable behaviour. However, even if your concern is about a single isolated occurrence of emotional abuse, if a child shows indicators of having suffered psychological harm then you should still take note of these and report appropriately.