What is the criteria for mental abuse?

Question

I was wondering what the 'definition' is of mental abuse. What things must occur in order for mental abuse to have taken place? I am looking for specific things, I have a general idea of what mental abuse is, like putting you down and making you feel like dirt. Does mental abuse have anything to do with 'turning someone against another person'. I am just not sure where that plays in to mental abuse. Like alienating a parent against a child or vice versa, is that mental abuse or just Parental Alienation Syndrom?

Answer 1

Menatl abuse is one of the most overlooked kinds of abuse that occurs. People can go to jail for physical abuse because there are signs. Menatl abuse is harder to " prove ". I am very familiar with it. It changes you, who your are, how you think, how you emotionally expierence things.

Heres a good website......
http://www.cyberparent.com/abuse/mentalemotionalabusers.htm

Answer 2

structural anguish comes to mind. Also when it is not intentional but it is structural anyway, so yes, alianating child from parent or vice versa is mental abuse when it puts child in anguish. This is Not the same for every child or person. Not while young and not when grown older. Some people are very resilliant and do not label something abuse when another would easily.And both are right in what they experience. That is what makes the question most difficult. It is a very personal experience when it comes to abuse. The fact that it comes to how you feel as a victim makes it almost impossible to give it a direct definition.

Answer 3

It is both. My husband had his visitation suspended because he was trying to turn my children against me because he had to pay child support. He was telling my children all sorts of things about me both untrue and exaggerated (like how my dad hated me when I was 16, etc) Things that are adult topics, not for ones children to hear about their parent. My children were made to go on long walks with their father to listen to him where they couldn't avoid him. The courts saw it as mental abuse because my one son became withdrawn and the other was violent towards me. He thought he could get the kids to be mean to me and I would give up and give them to him so he wouldn't have to pay anymore. He never put them down, only their mother. But to the court, that is the same thing because they are considered an extension of both of us. I had to defend myself to my children. It all worked out in the end because he has to prove himself fit and seek psychiatric help (now he says he is bi-polar and can't work due to his condition - just another way to avoid supporting his kids). He has not seen them in a year and I will tell you those boys are better in school, more social, go to church, play sports, and are honor roll students now. My older son had symptoms of ADD when he was around his dad and now he gets ALL A's in school. Mental abuse is harder to prove but it can be WORSE than physical because it is SO hard to prove. The final straw was when their dad beat his new wife and hospitalized her and he has not seen his kids since.

Answer 4

being bi-polar works