Spanking boosts odds of mental illness - study
People who were hit or spanked as children face higher odds of mental
ailments as adults, including mood and anxiety disorders and problems
with alcohol and drug abuse, researchers said on Monday.
The study, led by Canadian researchers, is the first to examine the
link between psychological problems and spanking, while excluding more
severe physical or sexual abuse in order to better gauge the effect of
corporal punishment alone.
Those who were spanked or hit as children were between two and seven
percent more likely to encounter mental issues later, said the research
in the US journal Pediatrics, based on a retrospective survey of more
than 600 US adults.
That figure may seem low, particularly since about half of the US
population recalls being spanked in childhood, but nevertheless shows
that physical punishment can raise the risk of problems later on,
experts said.
"The study is valuable because it opens the conversation about
parenting," said Victor Fornari, director of the division of child and
adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in
New York. The rate "is not dramatically higher, but it is higher, just
to suggest that physical punishment is a risk factor for developing more
mental disturbances as an adult," said Fornari, who was not involved in
the study.
Previous research has repeatedly shown that children who were
physically abused as youngsters suffer from more mental disturbances as
adults, and are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior than kids
who were not hit.
But these studies have typically included more serious abuse.
The current study excludes both sexual abuse and physical abuse that
left bruises, marks or caused injury.
Instead it focuses on "harsh physical punishment," defined as
pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping or hitting as a form of punishment
from elders.
-AFP
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