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When I was a kid I was beaten with a belt
for my sins a lot.
When I was in third or grade I remember my dad
beating me on the back with a belt after he forced me to
lie down on the living room floor for the crime of not getting
all A's and B's on my report card.
The last beating with a belt I remember was when I was in 7th grade. Then I actually did something wrong. It wasn't one of the usual punishments for "saying hi wrong" or "acting funny". After that beating I remember going to school and showing the other kids the welts on my back from the beating. The good thing about being beaten with a belt is that the welts go away after time and your body returns to normal. Of course that's not true with the psychological abuse. From the youngest moments of my life I will always remember my day yelling and cursing at me telling me I was a worthless piece of sh*t that would never amount to anything. As an adult I don't believe stuff like that, but when you are a little 5 year old child you do believe that stuff. Even today when I know it isn't true I somehow believe deep down inside that I am a "a worthless piece of sh*t that will never amount to anything" Study links physical punishment to later mental disorders By Michelle Healy, USA TODAY Children who are spanked, hit, or pushed as a means of discipline may be at an increased risk of mental problems in adulthood — from mood and anxiety disorders to drug and alcohol abuse, new research suggests. New research suggests a link between non-abusive physical punishment and several types of mental disorders. Although it is well established that physical and sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and other severe forms of maltreatment in childhood are associated with mental illness, this is one of the first studies to show a link between non-abusive physical punishment and several different types of mental disorders, says epidemiologist Tracie Afifi, lead author of the study in today's Pediatrics. "There is a significant link between the two," says Afifi, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Canada. "Individuals who are physically punished have an increased likelihood of having mental health disorders." Approximately 2% to 7% of mental disorders in the study were linked to physical punishment, she says. The study's findings add evidence to the argument that "physical punishment should not be used on any child, at any age," she says. Parents' right to use physical punishment has been abolished in more than 30 nations, but not in the USA or Canada, says the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment, endorsed by the United Nations and others. For the study, Afifi and colleagues analyzed data from a government survey of 35,000 non-institutionalized adults in the USA, collected between 2004 and 2005. Countries that have banned spanking More than 30 countries, have laws that prohibit corporal punishment in all settings, including the home. A sampling and the year the legislation was approved: About 1,300 of the respondents, all over age 20, were considered to have experienced physical punishment as children. They reported that they had, sometimes or more often, been "pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit by your parents or any adult living in your house." But some family researchers argue that spanking, used properly, can be appropriate discipline. "Certainly, overly severe physical punishment is going to have adverse effects on children," says psychologist Robert Larzelere, of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. "But for younger kids, if spanking is used in the most appropriate way and the child perceives it as being motivated by concern for their behavior and welfare, then I don't think it has a detrimental effect." A 2005 scientific review he co-authored, of studies comparing spanking with non-physical discipline methods, identified an "optimal type of physical discipline," referred to as conditional spanking, and said that when it was used as a backup to nonphysical discipline it was better at reducing noncompliance and antisocial behavior. While the new study rules out the most severe cases of physically lashing out at children, , "it does nothing to move beyond correlations to figure out what is actually causing the mental health problems," says Larzelere. He criticized the study's reliance on memories of events from years earlier, and says it's not clear when punishment occurred. "The motivation that the child perceives and when and how and why the parent uses (spanking) makes a big difference. All of that is more important than whether it was used or not." Afifi acknowledges that it's difficult to change people's mind on this topic, but says "we're confident of the reliability of our data, and the data strongly indicate that physical punishment should not be used on children — at any age. And it's important for parents to be aware of that." |