Sibling Bullying Can Lead to Depression, Anxiety in Victims https://www.healthday.com/health-news/general-health/sibling-bullying-can-lead-to-depression-anxiety-in-victims-677393.html Survivors will likely struggle throughout their lives with mental health and addiction issues, relationship difficulties and more, including suicide and ongoing abuse, as victim, perpetrator or both. Often, they are unaware their struggles are rooted in abuse by a brother or sister because our society accepts, ignores and/or silences violence, psychological and sexual abuse by siblings. Normalizing it as sibling ‘rivalry’ effectively condones it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213406002602?via%3Dihub Children experience a high frequency of violence from other children. Surveys suggest more than half of all children experience violence from a sibling in the course of a year (Goodwin & Roscoe, 1990; Roscoe, Goodwin, & Kennedy, 1987; Straus & Gelles, 1990; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980) and a quarter to a third from a non-sibling peer (Bennett & Fineran, 1998; Coker et al., 2000, Duncan, 1999; Finkelhor & Dziuba-Leatherman, 1994; Kilpatrick, Saunders, & Smith, 2002; Marcus, 2005, Singer et al., 1999). However, this violence between children, especially young children, is regarded differently from violence in general. The same violent act—a punch to the head or a whack with an object—that against an adult would readily be labeled an assault and treated as a crime, would rarely be so labeled when committed by one young child against another. Child-on-child violence is more often described with other terms like scuffles, fights, or altercations. Compared to peer assaults on older youth, very young child victims were actually more likely to be injured and more likely to be hit with an object that could cause injury. This study failed to confirm what many people would take for granted: that peer and sibling violence among younger children is less serious than among older youth. One implication is that such violence needs to be taken more seriously by schools and parents, and not dismissed with a view that it is just normal, minor and inconsequential. Schools and parents may need to set clearer standards against such violence and intervene earlier to prevent recurrence and protect victims.
Dr. Vernon Wiehe, author of several books about sibling abuse
Dr. Vernon Wiehe is the author of ten books in the field of family violence, speciifically violence between siblings. he has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs discussing sibling abuse and has lectured throughout the United States and abroad.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) studyA great overview and information about the original ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study with, however, a notable absence of sibling abuse)
Bessel van der Kolk: The Body Keeps the ScoreThe definitive book about trauma. Integrating therapy with science, this research demonstrates how critical it is to understand the impact of trauma, including developmental trauma that can – and often does – develop as a result of sibling abuse.
