People who are emotionally and physically abused by their intimate partners develop more mental illness and substance abuse problems than those who are only physically abused, Susan Ditter, M.D., said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
“Emotional abuse is not well studied, [but] it precedes and predicts physical aggression in marriage,” said Dr. Ditter, a forensic psychiatry fellow at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “It can occur without physical abuse, but the converse is rare.”
She and her colleagues looked at data from the National Violence Against Women Survey, a random-digit-dial phone survey of households nationwide. The survey, conducted from November 1995 to May 1996, included responses from 8,000 men and 8,000 women, all aged 18 years and older. All respondents were either currently married, formerly married, or in a cohabiting heterosexual relationship. Respondents who were involved in same-sex relationships were excluded.
Dr. Ditter and her associates distinguished between two subtypes of emotional abuse: verbal abuse, which involves verbal attacks and degrading behaviors, and power-and-control abuse, in which the victim is isolated and forced into traditional sex roles. They found that 25% of men and 27% of women had experienced verbal abuse, while 12% of men and 20% of women had experienced power-and-control abuse.
The risk of emotional abuse increased in people who were low income, less educated, uninsured, unemployed, divorced, or single. Dr. Ditter said. Widowed men were at higher risk for emotional abuse than widowed women.
The researchers also found that women and men who had experienced emotional abuse along with other types of intimate partner violence had more depression, more serious mental illness, more illicit drug use, and more antidepressant treatment than those who experienced the violence without emotional abuse.
She Called It "Mount Cope" 
July 31, 2009 at 4:04 am
Hmm…I dunno. This article sounds like BS. There’s a reason why people say, “it can happen to anyone at anytime.”
Also, No one is just physically abused. It’s combined with the others.
August 18, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I can relate to this type of experience first hand… Emotional abuse is so harmful to a person’s mental state. Sadly enough, even after having had many episodes of emotional (verbal and power-control) as well as some physical in my relationship with my boyfriend, I am still allowing the previous events to plague my thoughts and continue to make excuses to myself that things are different now. The events which occurred, the setting in which they occurred, and the circumstances of my life at these times, all played a role in eventually amounting to a serious mental breakdown; in which I still cannot be convinced and satisfied that what notions I arrived at during the “psychotic” episode are sorted out.
October 14, 2009 at 1:25 am
Well, yes….I wish I could only be a non-biased bystander but I do know first hand what it is like. And if you grow up seeing your mother emotionally abused, guess what?…you pick partner(s) just like that…. great.