Emotional abuse is sometimes called psychological abuse and it will seriously damage a child’s emotional health and development. Children who are emotionally abused often suffer other forms of abuse at the same time. The key elements are about persistent maltreatment that has long term effects. Every parent gets things wrong from time to time, but where parents do or say such serious things, particularly where they are repeated so that children and young people integrate them as part of who they are, this is abuse.
Emotional abuse
Emotional harm can be present in all forms of abuse, and can have significant long term effects on a child’s mental health, education, future expectations and ability to relate to others.
Definition of emotional abuse
“The persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and adverse effects on the child’s emotional development.”

Emotional abuse may involve communicating to children that they are worthless, inadequate or unloved, it may impose unreasonable expectations on a child which are inappropriate to their age and stage of development.
It may also involve over protection, limiting exploration and learning opportunities and chances for normal social interactions. It can mean the child being bullied by peers (e.g. peer on peer abuse) or witnessing the ill treatment of others (e.g. domestic abuse).
For resources to develop staff knowledge of safeguarding, subscribe today.
Termly subscription
£99+VAT Schools and Colleges
Join safeguarding network for more information on how to identify and intervene in schools.
- Training resources for DSLs to use in team meetings
- Reference documents for additional information
- Handout for school staff summarising emotional abuse
- Quiz to test staff understanding