Words can cause as much lasting harm as physical abuse. Verbal abuse can be used to intimidate, threaten, or belittle and is intended to cause emotional pain. Verbal and psychological abuse can include everything from yelling and name-calling to direct threats of physical harm or threats against people or things that are important to the other person as a way of instilling fear or gaining power and control.
Like other forms of abuse, verbal abuse often goes unreported. Adding to the challenge, verbal abuse is often unrecognized because attempts to blame, shame, humiliate, intimidate, or threaten are often disregarded as “jokes”; the recipient is told they misunderstood the person’s intentions or is called “too sensitive.” As a result, verbal abuse can be difficult to prove.
In many cases, verbal abuse sets the stage for physical abuse. As one man with disabilities explained, “He and I got into the verbal altercation … so he thought he would put me in my place by throwing me up on the back of the chair, then letting me hang there. I’m on a ventilator… I had already been off for an hour and a half, and I was getting rather winded… So he just left me hanging there, kept screaming at me, and I had to apologize to him … hardly able to breathe … He really scared the hell out of me.”
