Young people are calling for urgent action to end childhood verbal abuse by adults in a first-of-its-kind essay published next week in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
Authored by young people aged 14-26, the essay combines lived experience with academic research and advocacy. It reveals how harmful language from adults – often dismissed as “just words” – affects millions of children and should be recognised as a public health and child rights issue.
Two in five (41%) children experience verbal abuse from adults, with evidence linking it to life-long mental health impacts – anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse and even suicide.
Contributors to the essay
- Young authors,
- Professor Peter Fonagy, Head of the Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, UCL
- Jessica Bondy, Founder of Words Matter, the first charity in the world dedicated to ending childhood verbal abuse by adults and championing this issue globally
The essay describes how harsh language from adults – including blaming, shaming, humiliating, and criticising – can become “an inner voice that did not begin as our own”, shaping children’s sense of self, safety, and belonging. The authors argue that childhood verbal abuse must be recognised as a major public health problem and child rights concern affecting millions.
Two in five children in the UK experience verbal abuse from adults, with over half of these experiencing it weekly and one in ten daily[1]. The authors cite the growing evidence that childhood verbal abuse can have lifelong consequences, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance misuse, self-harm and even suicide. Emerging research also shows that verbal abuse can have neurobiological effects, influencing aspects of brain development and systems involved in emotional regulation and language processing.
Yet, despite this, childhood verbal abuse continues to be dismissed as “just words” or framed as discipline and justified as character-building – even though, as the essay argues, the harm is real and “socially easier to deny than to change”.
Rates of mental health problems among young people have risen sharply over the past decade, with one in five children in the UK now meeting criteria for a probable mental health condition. The authors argue that preventable risk factors such as verbal abuse must be addressed urgently if we are to respond meaningfully to this crisis.
The essay link is live.