Persistent, emotional ill-treatment of a child that results in severe impair-ment in emotional development. This may involve:
• Conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved.
• Imposing age or developmentally inappropriate expectations.
• Causing children to frequently feel frightened and threatened.
• Seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another as in domestic violence.
This form of abuse often co-exists with other forms of ill treatment.
This is almost always gradual and difficult to diagnose. Symptoms are largely behavioural and may include:
• Being excessively clingy.
• Attention-seeking behaviour.
• Overly anxious.
• Overly serious.
• Being anxious to please.
Parental behaviours are a clue to the diagnosis. Any of these must be per-sistent and severe, and have a major impact on the child in order to reach the threshold for emotional abuse:
• Persistently –ve view of the child.
• Inconsistent and unpredictable responses.
• Expectations that are very inappropriate.
Induction of a child into bizarre parental beliefs.