This shows an angry child.
Verbal abuse is not an inevitable part of growing up. Credit: Neuroscience News

Verbal Abuse in Childhood Rewires the Developing Brain

Summary: New neuroscience research highlights how verbal abuse in childhood can alter brain development and increase the risk of mental health issues later in life. Children who are routinely shamed, threatened, or belittled by adults may develop a hyperactive threat system and a blunted reward response, making trust and emotional regulation more difficult in adulthood.

These changes affect not only emotional wellbeing but also a child’s ability to form healthy relationships and build self-worth. Experts emphasize that verbal abuse is preventable and call for greater public awareness and policy action to protect children’s mental and neurological health.

Key Facts:

  • Neurodevelopmental Impact: Verbal abuse overactivates threat systems and dulls reward responses in children’s brains.
  • Long-Term Harm: Early verbal abuse increases risks of anxiety, depression, and social dysfunction in adulthood.
  • Preventable Harm: Ending verbal abuse is critical for healthy brain development and long-term wellbeing.

Source: The Conversation

Harsh words can wound – and when directed at children, they can have a lifelong impact.

Research has shown that when words are routinely used by the adults in their lives to humiliate, shame or control children, they can alter the developing brain.

2023 study of over 20,500 UK adults found that one in five reported having been verbally abused as children.

Credit: Neuroscience News

Definitions of verbal abuse vary, but it is generally characterised by a sustained pattern of behaviour where criticism, threats or rejection of the child leads them to feel routinely belittled, blamed, threatened, frightened or ridiculed.

This is not the same as occasionally losing your temper with your children and saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment.

I and colleagues believe this shapes how a child sees the world, others, and themselves. Exposure to abuse, including verbal abuse, leads to an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide attempts and drug use in later life.

It has an impact on forming trusting relationships as an adult. Yet despite its devastating consequences, verbal abuse remains largely overlooked in public debate and policy.

Preventing verbal abuse – along with all forms of child abuse and neglect – is more than just a moral imperative. It is essential for healthy brain development and lifelong wellbeing.

Changes in the brain

I was among the experts brought together by Jessica Bondy, founder of the Words Matter charity, in the House of Commons in April 2025 to discuss the prevention of childhood verbal abuse.

As a neuroscientist, I have spent decades using brain imaging to understand how early adversity and trauma, including verbal abuse, can shape a young person’s development.

We now know that emotional abuse, including consistently hostile or demeaning language from adults, can significantly alter the way a child’s brain perceives and reacts to the world.

Several key brain systems are affected. For example, our threat system normally helps us stay safe by detecting danger and triggering a quick response – the well-known “fight or flight” reaction.

But in children subjected to frequent abuse, including verbal abuse, this system becomes hyperactive. Even neutral social cues – a facial expression, or a joke or well-meaning comment – can be misinterpreted as threatening.

Verbal abuse also affects how children form relationships. In healthy development, warm verbal and non-verbal exchanges with caregivers – praise, compliments, thoughtful understanding – help teach children how to establish secure and healthy relationships. They also help them build self-worth and social confidence.

But verbal abuse, along with other forms of childhood maltreatment, can blunt the brain’s reward system. The brain becomes less responsive to positive experiences.

We believe that these brain adaptations can alter how a maltreated child builds their social world. They may help the child survive in an adverse social environment, but over time they accrue long-term costs.

It becomes harder to trust others; harder to navigate relationships; harder to believe you are of real value and truly lovable.

Lifelong consequences

By adulthood, the risk is that a repeated cycle of interpersonal stress and rupture is establishedRomantic relationships can be destabilised by deep-seated fears of abandonment or rejection.

Those early wounds fold into our sense of self, creating an enduring lens through which the world is perceived. It can be a struggle to feel at ease in one own’s mind, or safe in the mind of another.

In addition to my research work at UCL, I am CEO of Anna Freud, a charity dedicated to transforming mental health support through evidence-based care, cutting-edge research, professional training and accessible resources.

In our clinical work at Anna Freud, we have seen countless young people and adults struggle with the verbal messages they have received growing up.

Harsh language sticks because we are biologically wired to privilege negative and threatening information for our own protection. These verbal wounds underpin so much later anxiety, pain and distress. Adults can spend decades trying to compensate to prove those words wrong.

We need to shine a light on the impact of verbal abuse, helping parents, carers, teachers and all adults in a child’s life understand the power of their words. This does not imply that poor behaviour should go unchecked; children still need clear limits and honest corrective feedback.

However, it does mean creating environments – at home, at school, in communities – where children are spoken to with respect, encouragement and care.

Verbal abuse is not an inevitable part of growing up. It is preventable. And the science is clear: ending it is essential to safeguarding healthy brain development and improving life-long mental health outcomes. Society as a whole will benefit, with a new generation more likely to thrive in education and employment.

We need to ensure every child is nurtured by words that build them up, not tear them down.

About this neurodevelopment and verbal abuse research news

Author: Eamon McCrory
Source: The Conversation
Contact: Eamon McCrory – The Conversation
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News

The Conversation
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  1. I can relate with most of these. I remember when I left the my paternal house, even when I was far away from everyone I had dark thoughts of dying. I don’t have them now but I still feel like a burden to my partner still. People should see verbal abuse and neglect as a crime, I’ve been sexually abused and ironically it doesn’t impact me like the first two.

    I believe people who were verbally abused should talk about it more so others will understand that is serious like sexual assault, we are not being sensitive or seeking attention. It changes you without realizing becoming a different person than if you had with a more loving environment.

  2. I found this article to be very naive and oversimplistic. The vague assurance that by verbal abuse it is not “occasionally losing one’temper” leaves no clarity regarding line drawing. I’ve been struggling with a mentally ill child who is now a teenager. It is easy to say “occasionally lose one’s temper” in a context of “average” kids and average parenting, but the frustration levels experienced by every parent of an incipient bipolar child (or diagnosed bipolar child), or the parent of a child with diagnosed ODD (oppositional definance disorder) puts a lie to the implicit message underlying the article: the parent is at fault. The escalation from disagreement to out of control behavior can happen in the wink of an eye, and the superficial admonishment to avoid trying to “control” your [out of control child] is the equivalent of ‘be a better parent’. Teenagers are hard to parent, and a teenager with mental illness, with a contributing organic neurodivergence, is next to impossible.

  3. I want thank all of you who have posted comments. Reading them after reading this article makes me feel a lot less alone. I have never been good at making friends or keeping the ones I made. In fact, the only real friends I have now are my two amazing dogs of which I am extremely grateful for. I am not good at meeting new people and I don’t trust anyone. This is an awful way to live. It’s really sad to watch all these other people that have friends and go out on weekends knowing that you just can’t. I am 52 years old and this has been a life long problem. I just started going to therapy again after many years of avoiding it and thinking I could figure it all out myself, boy was I wrong. I have only been in therapy for a month and I have already learned so much about myself. Every session is painful because talking about all the abuse I have been through is almost like reliving it all over again. That being said, I am starting to understand things better and am feeling a little better. You are all very brave and we will all get through this one day at a time. My heart goes out to all of you. Love to all!

  4. Welp… I guess all of us commenting have some relationship to this unfortunately.

    It has indeed negatively shaped me as an adult. As a kid with this situation, you feel trapped because there is no other place to go. You don’t choose your parents and you can’t emancipate yourself as a small child. You want nothing more than to become an adult so you can get away from it. Then when that happens, you proceed to realize, you missed your childhood and will never get it back.

    As someone else said, I’m in my 40s, have never married, had kids, let alone ever been in a relationship. I’m the one who became the academic perfectionist, funny friend while internally dealing with my constant internal struggle of negative talk. All we can do is keep searching for our happiness, as long as it takes.

  5. Many have suffered along side you Patrick, found a group for depression and abuse, you will find people who are like you…who still have beautiful hearts regardless.

    The most insightful living people have had traumas….never ever give up, look for us and we can care for each other.

    In Japan broken items are mended together with gold and highly revered.

    We are like those items, broken but not destroyed, and often with hearts of gold.
    We are those items, often with hearts of gold, and worth searching for!💛

    We are everywhere….just look for us in the places you haven’t looked.
    *Please know if you keep going you can still have a beautiful life, the trick is just find a place with some similar souls to share your experiences.
    Try the church, or Buddhist temple, interfaith, mental health groups, art therapy classes, spiritual meditation, volenteering etc.or mental health groups.

    Sometimes it helps to get busy and find a hobby, just keep looking until you find a few who are similar….you just need a few good ppl and build from there.Do both find a hobby, go to a spiritual practice and look for a mental health group or centre, the more places you seek, the more likely you will find comfort. You still need to start speaking to yourself in a loving way too, that can strengthen you immensel. You must try to be your own best friend first, it’s a new practice…but you can do this!

    We are out there🙏🏻❤️‍🩹💖❤️‍🔥
    And life can get better and more fulfilling.

    Many Blessings 🙌

  6. As a child that came from a Family where Verbal abuse was the daily norm, there is hope.
    The way we are treated can also teach Us, how Not to treat others.
    You have a choice, a decision, that you ask yourself, How do I want to be?.
    What path shall I choose, and who do I want to become?
    I was always looking for the beauty in things, to cover the fear and instability I felt at home.
    We would loose ourselves in reading books and music, and being outside was our soul food.
    Some inner intuition to run, and play, was our safety net.
    The child like sense of wonder and curiosity is still with Me,even tho I still feel that I don’t fit, or am not quite right, it sustains the belief that in some way I am still worthy, that beauty is always there…….you just have to take the time to look, or not loose the child like curiosity to see it.

  7. My brothers and I grew up with the environment of verbal abuse described. None of us is married or has children. A second scarring can take place through superficial social judgements, which is something we can also change through awareness raising. I took up the practice of Buddhist meditation in the 1990s. Practising loving-kindness and breath-awareness has changed my life. I have a loving relationship of 17 years standing. Research now shows the real change these practices bring about over time. I still live with hypersensitivity and overwhelm. I still have my life history which reports a lack of conventional success. Research like this shines a light on causes and conditions, the opposite mindset from judgement and blame. We each have the opportunity of becoming healers, for ourselves and others.

    1. Congratulations on finding a path to healing. May your journey continue to ever-greater success. Namasté.❤️

  8. I have been abused many years verbally and sexually and neglected in some ways abused by mom and one of my sisters and my exes and some other people in my life and I have been trying to find the loveing careing persons to learn to complete comprehending me and to helping me be able to live a Good life. I think that All the traumas I been in is y I cant talk good a lot of times and cant get my brain and my mind and my words to work for me too many times in my life malfunctions

  9. My parent was severely verbally abusive every single day.. to me and my siblings we all suffer from mental illness depression obesity low self-esteem anxiety thank you so much for this article I have been trying for years to get her words of my mind…

  10. I was verbally abused as a child to the extent that I thought it was “normal” and that all adults are like that. I developed a cynical view of the world early on.

    Now, I’m thirty years old. I’ve failed to integrate into society, I have no friends, can’t hold down a job, I’m socially inept, and I never finished my bachelor’s degree because the social pressures were more than I could handle.

    I will never understand how to be a “normal person.” No matter how hard I try to explain that I’m neurologically hardwired this way, that I can’t change (I’ve tried all my life), people behave dismissively with me like it’s not their problem and it’s my fault I don’t have friends cause I must be a shitty person. I’m mentally ill, but I’m not mean. I would never treat someone the awful ways I’ve been treated throughout my life.

    Even my previous therapists wouldn’t take me seriously whenever I tried bringing up my childhood trauma. Now I’m convinced that my only option is to kill myself. I don’t know when I’ll finally go through with it, but I’ve been battling ideations for so long and I just can’t keep it up much longer…

    1. Patrick please don’t. I’ll be your friend. My name is Christina. Where are you from? I’m from Texas

    2. Thank you for sharing your story. I’m glad you stayed another day. There are people in this world who recover from the childhood baggage we carry. The journey is difficult, as you know, but not impossible. Please stay. The world needs you. You can help someone else who is struggling with the same issues.

  11. The screaming and the mean words. Words of hate, you should really try to never use, were screamed into my soul for all of my childhood. Now as an adult I often feel like an empty shell of a human being. Such a life wasted since the start with no way for me to find happiness in a world hell bent on destroying itself. It’s really no wonder there’s so much pain and misery in our world. In my mind I was always thinking, “Maybe I deserve this.” Now it’s just every time someone hurts me.

  12. This article is presented as original research in my feed, but what it reads like is exactly what it is: a promotion of some NGO for some event. No research here, only references to it while trumpeting the work of some particular group.
    Embarrassing.

    1. Yes, what hope is there for the adult who grew up with verbal abuse?
      Your article does a great job of painting a morose outlook for this person. So, what treatments are available to bring healing to the mind of a struggling adult?

      1. Jesus is our hope. He loves us and won’t leave. Nor will He abuse you. If you ask Him to come into your heart,receive Him as savior, beleive that He died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the grave, He will come into your heart, save you from sins, give you eternal life in heaven and bring healing to your soul. He never leaves. He brings us into a relationship with our heavenly father. Trust Him.

    2. I’d like to know the same, what strategies are there to cope and build up confidence and trust as an adult experiencing the consequences of a verbally abusive parent?

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