People who were hit or spanked as children face higher odds of mental ailments as adults, including mood and anxiety disorders and problems with alcohol and drug abuse, researchers said on Monday.
The study, led by Canadian researchers, is the first to examine the link between psychological problems and spanking, while excluding more severe physical or sexual abuse in order to better gauge the effect of corporal punishment alone.
Those who were spanked or hit as kids were between two and seven per cent more likely to encounter mental issues later, said the research in the US journal Pediatrics, based on a retrospective survey of more than 600 US adults.
That figure may seem low, particularly since about half of the United States population recalls being spanked in childhood, but nevertheless shows that physical punishment can raise the risk of problems later on, experts said.
“The study is valuable because it opens the conversation about parenting,” said Victor Fornari, director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York.
The rate “is not dramatically higher, but it is higher, just to suggest that physical punishment is a risk factor for developing more mental disturbances as an adult,” said Victor Fornari, who was not involved in the study.