Analysis of Emotional Abuse in Adolescent Relationships

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-51-0_22How to use a DOI?

Keywords

adolescent; mental health; emotional abuse; relationships

Abstract

The mental health of adolescents has been a concern of society. Adolescents generally have high plasticity, inner sensitivity, and a desire to establish strong bonds with the outside world. They need privacy and freedom but cannot sometimes judge and think independently. Therefore, emotional abuse becomes a threat to their mental development. This research focuses on the emotionally abusive behaviors in adolescent relationships, including standard features of both victims and abusers, effects of emotional abuse on adolescents, and practical ways to solve the problem. In this research, semi-structured interviews were conducted. The sample includes 11 adolescents between 14 and 18 years old who experienced (or are experiencing) emotional abuse in different types of relationships. Teenage victims are mentally immature, lack understanding of emotional abuse, and believe they would not be harmed by it. Emotional abusers frequently come across as attractive, mature, or even in a position of authority, and some abusers were also hurt in relationships. Emotional abuse would damage teenagers’ mental health along with explicit physiological uncomfortableness. Victims should build self-imposed boundaries and self-acceptance and should actively look for help from professionals. This paper may offer some guidance for adolescents to view interpersonal relationships properly, and to help adolescents avoid emotional abuse and mitigate the effects of emotional abuse on their mental health without the intervention of medicines.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiaying Guo
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/09
TI  - Analysis of Emotional Abuse in Adolescent Relationships
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 7th International Conference on Modern Management and Education Technology (MMET 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 166
EP  - 172
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-51-0_22
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-51-0_22
ID  - Guo2022
ER  -