Emotional Abuse Research: A Narrative Review Emotional Abuse Research: A Narrative Review

The current literature (2024-2025) on emotional abuse can be categorized as the prevalence of emotional abuse, negative effects of emotional abuse, comorbidities of emotional abuse and potential underlying biological mechanisms. The prevalence of emotional abuse has varied widely from 16% to 60% across cultures and different ages. When it has been compared to other forms of abuse including physical and sexual abuse, its negative effects on mental health have been surprisingly greater. Emotional abuse has also led to academic, relationship, emotional, physical, and addiction problems as well as self-harm/suicidality. Emotional effects include emotional dysregulation, rejection sensitivity and loneliness. Physical problems include sleep disturbances, cardiac dysfunction, infectious diseases and accelerated biological aging. Addictions include internet and gaming addiction as well as workaholism. Comorbidities include depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance use disorder. Potential underlying biological mechanisms for the negative effects of emotional abuse have also been reported including low heart rate variability, elevated inflammatory biomarkers, hyperactivation of the right amygdala and changes in activation and connectivity in multiple brain regions. Methodological limitations of this literature include self-report recall data that has limited reliability, the arbitrary selection of mediation/moderation variables and the confounding of the negative effects of emotional abuse by emotional neglect, multiple emotional states and comorbid psychiatric conditions.