People who have suffered abuse have twice as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who have not. There is a need to enlighten parents and guardians concerning the lasting impact of abuse on an individual as they might be unaware of better ways of correcting or disciplining their children. With time, abused children reflect on the depressing things they hear or experience and consider themselves valueless. For example, a child who fails in examinations will believe that he is stupid if that is what he has been regularly called by his parent. Such a pattern of self-criticism proceeds into adulthood.
Abuse of any form has the likelihood of influencing self-critical inclinations. Though physical and sexual forms of abuse do not directly convey obnoxious words such as one being worthless, the overall implication of the act clearly does. Continued abuse alters the chemistry and structure of the person’s brain and resets its degree of sensitivity. Such people become unduly responsive to environmental forces. This makes minimal levels of strain arouse an outpouring of stress hormones, which act directly on numerous sites to create behavioral indications of depression. To undo the embossment of abuse, it has to be accessed, exposed, and the experience processed and skillfully weakened. If not, it continues to manifest a ruined core of self.
People who experienced childhood abuse are at a higher risk of developing depression and anxiety than those who did not. The created pattern of self-criticism makes abused people vulnerable to depression and anxiety. Effective abuse interventions require the discovery and revelation of its effects with the experience being processed and expertly diluted.