The Unkindest Cut: The Emotional Maltreatment of Children

by Naomi Haines Griffith and Janet S. Zigler

Emotional maltreatment is a serious threat to children, and ultimately to all of us, yet it has long been ignored despite the fact it dramatically affects our lives every day. This book is readable,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972329102
• ISBN13: 9780972329101
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Red Clay & Vinegar
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Emotional Healing

This enlightening book gives new discoveries and groundbreaking research on definitions, awareness, and painful truths regarding emotional maltreatment/abuse of children. Connections are made to other forms of abuse and how they may be prevented. State and federal statutes are compared along with studies of family cases. The title summarizes the most painful and deepest trauma that children and families have suffered from. I strongly recommend this book to social workers, nurses, counselors, teachers, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, judges, and families who are committed to ending cycles of ALL types of abuse. This book will provoke a deeper meaning of EMPATHY towards children who suffer from abuse, and with further research involving mental health treatment, to mending families rather than separating them. A comparison was made in the book describing how different the law is pertaining to the removal of a Native American child versus an American child. Both my grandmother and father were removed as children, because they are Native Americans and for no other reason. I feel validated that there is a law that protects this now, although I feel that the cultural/emotional/spiritual/mental damage this has caused over four centuries is the deepest. I feel there are still undefined and invalidated symptoms resulting from cultural abuse which exist and continue to cause emotional abuse. More education and sensitivity is needed publicly involving the history of abuse in this country, as well as its connection to mental illness, substance abuse, racism, and domestic violence. The book begins describing our Nations' history describing physical abuse, then sexual abuse, and now scratching the surface under both with emotional abuse. As an adult survivor I can tesify that there is more literature, support, and counseling for adults and children involving physical and sexual abuse than there is for emotional abuse. I looked for more books and literature on emotional abuse and healing after reading this book, and found very little. Addressing the problem is what this book begins to do. Some suggestions are given, but living in the solution in this country, is a whole new ball game. For healing through emotional abuse, I would recommend a book by Marsha Linehan which helped me personally with identifying, feeling, and healing emotional dysfunction caused by abuse. I read it in conjunction with intensive one year cognitive behavior therapy program. That is the closest I have come to dealing with any form of awareness and healing related to emotional abuse, without ever naming it directly. Sadly, there was always more emphasis placed on the physical and sexual abuse, and in some places, still is. The reports given in this book validate that a child can display symptoms of being abused without ever experiencing any form of physical or sexual abuse. I do not believe that the author could have written such informati