This Is News? Psychological Abuse as Bad as Physical Abuse

I get my news from various sources. In the morning, I listen to the radio, read the paper, and skim the Internet. All the news sources I consulted this morning had this story: Psychological Maltreatment Can Be as Harmful as Physical Abuse. My first reaction was, really? Wow. I'm glad that someone wrote a paper on that, otherwise we would never have known. But as I began writing this post, my sarcasm waned and I began to understand the importance of putting this out into the news.

Physical abuse is horrible and inexcusable. Thankfully, these days people tend to step in when they see it or learn of it. Children must be protected from those who are bigger and stronger - and there is never an excuse for causing physical harm to a child. But psychological abuse is another animal. It is often tolerated, brushed off, explained away. We close our ears and turn, because there seems like there isn't a lot we can do about it, we believe.

I knew a young mother who wasn't very nice to her children in public. She called them names, told them they were "retarded," and screamed at them. We never saw her physically hurt the children, but we definitely heard her go at it with her words. Many of us tried to talk to her about it, even people who worked with the children, but she didn't get it. She said that she loved the kids and they knew it. If we didn't approve of her child rearing, that wasn't her problem. There were no physical marks of violence. But you could see in their eyes, they were beaten down - I recognized it because I know what it's like. I often wonder if I could have done more and it haunts me sometimes.

After my initial "wow, thanks for telling us" gut reaction to the news, I began to think about it and understand why this is important news. It wasn't that long ago when people did not report sexual or physical abuse. It just wasn't talked about. If a child is going through something like that, once he or she starts trying to reach out to people - it's very difficult for them to understand why no one is trying to help. Now that the topic isn't as taboo as it used to be, help may be possible. As this type of abuse is talked about, the children may learn that it's not normal and it's not acceptable.

But psychological abuse isn't yet at that point. When a child experiences psychological abuse and no one steps in, it becomes normal. After all, if no one is trying to stop it, then - in the child's eyes - it must be ok and the adults who are doing this must be right. They must be stupid, ugly, fat, bad... But it's not right and it has to stop just as we want to stop other types of abuse. Maybe news like this will help raise sensitivity, maybe people will speak up. The problem is, what happens when you do and nothing changes?

The Lasting Effects of Tragedy

This recent tragedy in Colorado and the year marking of the violence in Norway last year had me thinking about how people are affected by violence, even if they aren't directly related.

Several years ago, I began writing a book about abuse. It wasn't the typical type of book that one might expect, like a tell-all or exploration into the minds of an abuser or victim. It was a look at how a single act by one person on one person can affect so many other people, even years later. I likened it to shattered glass. You drop a glass in the kitchen and it shatters. You clean it up as well as you can and you think you got it all. But, one day, you move the fridge and you step on a sliver that you missed. Or you find one in the corner one day while you're washing the floor. Slivers of glass can be found far away from the actual accident and can still cause pain weeks, months later.

The summer just as I finished grade 7, which would have been the last week of June, a classmate who lived around the corner from me was raped and murdered. Her body was left in a field not all that far from where we lived. At the time, it was only the second such crime in our sleepy suburb of Montreal. A year earlier, another girl about the same age had been raped and killed - as it turns out by the same person. He was only 17 years old, we found out later.

The day Debbie, my classmate, went missing I remember the crowd around her house and I heard a low-flying helicopter. It took over a day for Debbie's body to be found so there were a lot of helicopter passes as they searched. To this day, 37 years later, whenever I hear a low-flying helicopter, I'm transported back to the time. I automatically think a child may be missing.

I don't think of Debbie often and I don't know why I thought of her yesterday. We weren't friends, we were just people who passed each other in the hall at school, took the same school bus - that sort of thing. But every so often, her 14-year-old face flashes into my mind, as I imagine the faces of those who died on Thursday in the theatre massacre will flash in others' as time passes.


It's often said that people will forget and move on with life. And we do move on, but I don't think we do forget, even if we're only touched peripherally. Those splinters of glass can still be found, when we least expect it.

Sepsis Death Needs Call to Action - Not Blaming

Terrible things happen every day. For example, on June 25, I wrote about how we were up to 33 drownings in the province of Quebec this year. As of this past weekend, we were at 45. It's a knee-jerk reaction to blame the parents or the people who were watching the children, but that doesn't bring the children back. We need to learn from the mistakes that happened and try to prevent further tragedies.

The same thing is happening, in my opinion, with the story about 12-year-old Rory Staunton, who died of sepsis after a cut on his arm became infected (NY Times report - Yahoo Shine report - NY Times OpEd).

What happened to Rory was a terrible, horrible tragedy. Did someone drop the ball? It sure seems so. But the finger pointing is leading to defensiveness and harsh words between people who blame the "evil" system and who they believe to be uncaring doctors, and doctors who are defending themselves saying that they can't know everything all the time - that sometimes, mistakes are made.

I know, I'm a nurse. I've made my share of errors as a nurse. Let me tell you, doctors and nurses, and other healthcare professionals, do not feel good when they make a mistake. Those mistakes often keep us awake at night and cause us great personal pain and distress. This is not anything like the pain a family or patient may feel, but people who work in the healthcare system are human - no more and no less than anyone else.

Blame doesn't get anyone anywhere. What we need to do to prevent another Rory or any of the others you will find here in the Faces of Sepsis from getting so ill, is to know what we are up against, to be knowledgeable about our own health. We need to push for action, for change.

Sepsis Alliance is a patient advocacy group in the United States and a founding member of the Global Sepsis Alliance. They have a call to action: Have all hospitals in the United States adopt Code Sepsis by year 2020. It wasn't all that long ago that hospitals began to adopt Code Blue, a protocol that kicks into action when someone has a cardiac arrest. Like Code Blue, Code Sepsis would be a protocol followed across the board, providing fluids and antibiotics within the first hour of the suspicion of sepsis. Code Blue has saved thousands of lives. Code Sepsis can too.

Push for sepsis awareness in your community. Push your government representatives to make sepsis awareness a priority. Push, push, push.

Blaming will not bring Rory Staunton back, but pushing for change, pushing for awareness - these will help prevent future tragedies like what has touched the Stauntons.

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Late addition:

Please don't get me wrong. I understand blaming people, I understand there are often circumstances when a person's negligence or actions cause injuries or death and blame is a natural response. The point of this blog post is to try to explain how it would be a good thing for everyone - I think - for us to try to move past blame and work on action to prevent such injuries and deaths from happening to someone else. Working on action doesn't take away a person's culpability, but it moves things forward.

An Honour - a top 10 blog pick

It's always nice to be recognized for your work and I was very pleased to be chosen as one of 10 Canadian health and fitness bloggers that the people at She Knows Canada felt was worthy of highlighting and recommending to their readers.

Inspiration for Healthier Living; 10 Canadian health and fitness bloggers we love (I'm on the second page),  has some very interesting blogs written by people who could be your friend, your sibling, your neighbour. I feel I am in very good company.

When I write my posts, I try to pick topics that people are interested in, that they can identify with, and that need to be explained in a way that isn't too medical or clinical. It isn't always easy to find information like that on the Internet.

Some of my topics are perennial favourites and are visited at least a few times every day by people who find them through web searches. Other topics that I think will spark conversation don't. Who knows why some topics are more popular than others. I certainly never believed my post on broken hips would be my number one post - but it is.

I regularly get emails from people who want me to link to their for-profit blogs. I always say no. I want my blog to stay independent and free of any outside influences. I do take the occasional guest post, but only after ensuring that A) the person knows what he or she is talking about, and B) the topic falls into what I am trying to do: provide helpful information without trying to sell anything.

So, thank you to She Knows Canada for the recognition and thank you to those who come to my blog to read and to learn.