Pediatrics has just published a study of enormous impact, since it defends that hitting children can cause mental problems in a clearly significant percentage, being able to directly relate up to 7% of mental disorders (including paranoia, anxiety and depression) with being punished with whipping or slapping during childhood.
In this work, carried out at the University of Manitoba (Canada) by a team led by Tracie Affii it is clarified that they are not referring to abuses or behaviors typified as criminal abuse, but to the parenting and education practices that involve using physical punishment, whipping or slapping.
This work is based on more than 34,000 interviews with North American adults over 20 years of age during 2004 and 2005, in which they were asked if they had been pushed, received shoves, cakes, whips or blows during their childhood by their parents or other adults living in their homes. I clarify again as the authors point out, there is no talk of physical abuse with beatings, but of hit the children as a direct cause or related to mental problems.
The data showed that while 16% and 30% of respondents who were not hit by their parents, for example, had suffered from depression or alcohol abuse, the figures amounted to 20 and 43% in the case of children who had been hit sometimes or frequently. Not only that, but in the most frequent cases there were also higher rates of personality, emotional disorders and substance abuse.
People who had been slapped or received scourges of children were 59% more likely to suffer alcoholism, 41% more likely to suffer from depression and 24% more to suffer from panic attacks.
They also emphasize that it is a mistake to consider that if there is no criminally punishable abuse there is no violence, and that suffering this type of punishment produces stress and that can lead to, in adult life, suffer with greater possibility mental problems, depression and alcohol abuse.
That is, even if physical abuse is not reached if violent actions are being taken and that these can leave an indelible mark on the psyche of children. And that is very serious, if we realize that half of the parents hit their children.
The study, in summary, indicates that parents who beat their children cause children to be more likely to suffer from mental disorders or present aggressiveness, depression, crime, alcoholism and anxiety. There will be those who continue to deny it but more and more scientific studies prove it.
