Psychological Maltreatment And It's Relation

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Psychological Maltreatment and it's Relationship with Negative Affect in Men and Women by Dawn Chirichella-Besemer and Robert W. Motta is a research article published in the Journal of Emotional Abuse(2008). The research attempted to show the relationship between psychological maltreatment and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anger, anxiety, and depression. It also suggested gender differences with the same. Although the results did not support different levels by gender, psychological maltreatment does appear to affect levels of PTSD, anger, anxiety, and depression. Dawn Chirichella-Besemer and Robert W. Motta theorized that there is a relationship between psychological maltreatment and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The authors explain their difficulty in defining psychological maltreatment. They found multiple operational definitions but ultimately they decided the definition by Garbarino, Gutterman, and Seeley (1986) to be the best choice. Garbarino et al. describes psychological maltreatment as “rejecting, terrorizing, isolating, ignoring, and corrupting” (1986). The authors also theorized that a positive correlation exists between psychological maltreatment and depression, anxiety and anger. Chirchella-Besemer and Motta discussed symptoms of depression, anxiety and anger as having low self worth, emotional problems, suicidal tendencies, embarrassment, regret, and being socially awkward, In the synopsis of the current study section of the article, the authors wrote their hypotheses as being (a) Individuals who were psychologically maltreated would have significantly higher levels of PTSD than those who were not psychologically maltreated. (b) Individuals who were psychologically maltreated would exhibit significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, and anger than individuals who were not psychologically maltreated. (c)
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