Good morning to you Ms. George Fernadez .

My name is Atalia Whitehalland it is my

pleasure to discuss the topic of my IA, the long term psychological impacts of emotional abuse
of parental figures. I chose this topic as I am interested in the psychological impacts of abuse.
The pandemic has led to emotional abuse becoming a growing affair with a notable increase of
12.7% in reported cases in 2020 which increased to 17.2 % in 2021 as reported by the Children’s
Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, and thus my oral presentation proves to educate my audience
on its long term psychological impacts. According to psychotherapist Mayra Mendez
“emotional abuse is behaviors characterized as criticizing, humiliating, belittling, as well as
ignoring, or rejecting a child.” As my reflection touched on the mental aspects, the aim of this
expository is to evaluate the social and physical issues of emotional abuse, challenges faced in
gathering data , the primary and secondary sources as well as the mediums and channels used to
obtain the sources in order to prove the credibility of my topic.

The social repercussions of emotional abuse is one of the issues that must be taken into
consideration including the victim’s interaction with society as well as society’s treatment of the
victim. According to kidshelpline .com, forcing a child to do things by threatening abuse makes
it difficult for victims to trust people in the fear of being hurt. These trust issues negatively
manifest themselves as they also struggle to form and maintain long term healthy relationships in
the fear of being abused physically and psychological. Most of the time, victims don't even
realize that they've been emotionally abused, which negatively impacts their relationships and
the government should ensure that the public is more educated on emotional abuse.

Undeniably, behavioral problems are another long term psychological impact of emotional abuse
and thus, presents itself as an issue in my topic. When victims display actions that have a lack of
consideration for the well-being of others it is known as anti- social behavior and many times it
is a consequence of being isolated by their abuser. Treating a child badly because of things they
can’t change may also result in them engaging in disruptive ways that violate the basic rights of
another person. This can also be a consequence of constantly explosing a child to abusive
behaviour. A study published in 2015 in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect by Dr. Timothy
Jones found a link between childhood emotional abuse, and impulsive behaviors in young
adulthood. Coupled with the fact that society doesn't treat emotional abuse in the manner they
treat with physical abuse, victims aren't taken seriously. This proves it difficult for victims to get
the help that they need.

Thirdly, the last issue faced in emotional abuse is its link to the development of eating disorders.
As a result of belittling a child for their appearance, many victims develop eating disorders. A
study conducted by Anat Talmon, a researcher of the university of Stanford and Cathy Wilson, a
psychologist and professor known for her research in the fields of early childhood abuse and
neglect, sought to estimate the prevalence of childhood emotional abuse in bulimic and normal-
eater control groups. A group of women diagnosed with a bulimic disorder and normal-eater
women were assessed for childhood trauma and eating-disorder symptoms. It was found that
childhood emotional abuse was significantly more prevalent in the bulimic group. It was
concluded that childhood emotional abuse influenced the severity of eating disorder symptoms
by impacting an individual's self-esteem and capacity for regulation.

Without a doubt, there were a few challenges faced in exploring my topic. Firstly, the topic being
discussed is very sensitive and people were reluctant to come forward to conduct an interview
for privacy and security reasons, causing a delayed response in potential interviewees. Another
challenge faced was that the process of evaluating documents and records proved to be time-
consuming as lots of valuable time was spent combing through articles trying to ensure they
meet the criteria of being valid and reliable. Finally, the currency of the topic affected its
landscape as it was difficult to obtain information on emotional abuse since the amount of
research on this topic was limited.

For this presentation, primary data was gathered, the channel being Zoom, due to numerous
Covid 19 regulations which would hinder the administration of the interview. It was carried out
on February 12th, 2022 at 1 in the afternoon. The context in which research was carried out was
in a quiet room by myself to limit distractions and to allow the interviewee to feel more
comfortable. The channel is reliable since it uses end-to-end encryption which is regarded as safe
because it reduces the number of parties who might be able to interfere with the transmission of
data and it uses high speed internet to make the communication process faster and allow easy
exchange of information. Its validity is proven as the application was updated recently and it has
various features to enhance the communication process such as a chat box

My primary source was an interview with a victim of emotional abuse which is relevant to my
topic. The data collected is reliable as the interviewee experienced the impacts of emotional
abuse firsthand and the interview was conducted recently. However, its validity is questionable
as even though all the questions asked covered all aspects of my topic and the interviewee gave
long detailed answers, the sample size was extremely small since only 1 person was interviewed
and this prevents any generalizations being made. This could be improved by increasing the
number of individuals interviewed as well as targeting different genders and ethnicgroups, as to
allow for accuracy.

Furthermore, secondary data was provided from an article on medicalnewtoday. com by Jenna
Fletcher. It was last medically reviewed on November 21, 2019 by Timothy J. Legg, who
specializes in a wide variety of psychiatric and mental health issues,making the source very
reliable. The author has also written other articles on mental health and the impact of childhood
abuse, making them an expert in the field, furthering the reliability. It was considered valid since
it focuses on emotional abuse and goes in depth in the topic, educating the public on what it is
and the psychological impacts and the information can be generalized to other situations, people
and settings, making it externally valid.

The context of conducting my research was done in my bedroom at night because it is usually
quiet and in my room to avoid any distractions which allowed me to focus on my medium to
avoid any errors in collecting the data needed. It was conducted on my computer which has been
recently updated for optimum efficiency. The medium of my secondary source is the website
used, medicalnewtoday. com which is reliable as it was peer reviewed by various pychairsts who
are specialists in the field of mental health and Hypertext transfer protocol secure is used which
is encrypted in order to increase security of data transfer. The article was recently written making
it current and it also gave detailed information on the topic with supporting statistics, proving its
validity.
In conclusion, I hope that the content covered in my presentation on the topic of the long term
psychological impacts of emotional abuse of parental figures proved to be educational.
Emotional abuse is abuse and although it is not physical,victims develop behavioral problems
and eating disorders,and find difficulty in forming and maintaining relationships. I have learnt
that anyone can be a victim of emotional abuse, which is a terrifying fact to learn. I hope that
with this information persons can be guided in understanding the victims of emotional abuse.

Thank you