While this paper will highlight several different types of abuse and define them, the main focus will be on emotional abuse, which is the hardest type of abuse to spot in a child. Other names for emotional abuse are verbal abuse, mental abuse, and psychological maltreatment or abuse. Abuse does not show the same identifiers as physical abuse, such as bruises and scars. Emotional abuse can cause mental scars that can last a lifetime. This type of abuse can also result in serious cognitive, behavioral, emotional, or mental disorders. More research must be done to gain more information on this type of abuse and what can be done to prevent its occurrence. There are many different types of child abuse. Child abuse is defined as the physical, sexual, or emotional maltreatment or neglect of children by parents, guardians, or others responsible for a child's welfare. Physical abuse is characterized by physical injury, usually inflicted as a result of a beating or inappropriately harsh discipline. Sexual abuse includes molestation, incest, rape, prostitution, or the use of a child for pornographic purposes. Neglect can be physical in nature (abandonment, failure to seek needed health care), educational (failure to see that a child is attending school), or emotional (abuse of a spouse or another child in the child's presence, allowing a child to witness adult substance abuse). Inappropriate punishment, verbal abuse, and humiliating the child in front of their peers are also forms of emotional or psychological child abuse.
             Emotional neglect is different from other types of abuse. Even though emotional neglect involves ignoring or withdrawing from the child emotionally, the difference is that emotional neglect is not in response to any particular thing the child has done. The child may be getting ignored simply because the parent is depressed, mentally ill, drug-involved or otherwise emotionally unavailable to the child. Or, the emotional negle...