Psychological Abuse As Harmful As Other Child Maltreatment
Children who are routinely yelled at, belittled, ignored, or threatened by their parents can develop lifelong emotional wounds as damaging as those caused by physical or sexual abuse. So suggests a new study published Monday in Pediatrics. Psychological maltreatment is harder to spot than other types of abuse, and it's hugely underreported, the researchers said. There's no one definition of what constitutes this type of abuse, but it ranges from chronically humiliating or ridiculing a child, to leaving an infant alone in a crib all day, except for feeding or changing. "Psychological abuse is so insidious, and is not as easily recognized by the victim or other family members," Alec Miller, chief of child and adolescent psychology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, told HealthDay. "If you see someone getting beaten, we all know it's against the law. It's demarcated as illegal and very unhealthy. Some of these other things are a little more slippery. If there is no bruising physically, it's harder to be convinced there is abuse."
Would You Pay a Stranger to Cuddle With You?Â
No nudity. No sex. Just cuddling.Â
That's what one New York woman is selling, for $60 an hour or $90 for 90 minutes. Yes, it's legal outside Nevada, and no, it's not what you think. Jacqueline Samuels' appointment-based business, The Snuggery, offers private, boundary-driven sessions to the snuggle-deprived. She's doing it because she believes in the healing power of touchâ€"psychological and physical benefits she says Americans are sorely lacking.Â
"I've always loved to cuddle," says Samuels, 29, of Penfield, N.Y., who is pursuing a master's degree in social work. She once gave out free hugs at a local mall, but was told to leave by security. "I thought this discomfort with physical affection must mean somethingâ€"that it deserved further exploration," she says. Later, while interviewing sex workers for a graduate school research paper, she learned that many of the women reported their clients didn't want to have sex "as much as they wanted a person to be physically close to and speak to."Â
Samuels is clear about her boundaries during cuddling sessions, and says most of her clients have been respectful. (In the past six weeks, she's had 19 customers; some have returned several times, while others are once and done.) [Read more: Would You Pay a Stranger to Cuddle With You?]
Getting Paid to Stay FitÂ
If more people were paid to stay fit, America would look like a very different nation. Becoming a personal trainer offers that incentiveâ€"and it's one of the country's fastest-growing careers, predicted to increase 30 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.Â
Much of that growth will be driven by 20- and 30- somethings like Alexander Pompa, 24. Pompa, spent five years in the Marine Corps before becoming a certified personal trainer. He says the discipline of the military has helped him manage other peoples' fitness goals. "You're in charge of these people. You have to learn how to manage your schedule as well as another person's health," says Pompa, who works at Fitness First in Bethesda, Md. "You have to keep up the intensity so they remain focused on the exercise and don't drift. People have to use their mind to tell their muscles what to do."Â
Apart from leadership skills, personal training involves creativity and empathyâ€"and could be described as a professional buddy system, says Stephen Rodrigues, a longtime trainer who has watched the business evolve from a rich person's past-time to something of a mainstream luxury. The public's push to get fitâ€"coupled with rising obesity levelsâ€"has made personal training a sought-after service. Getting certification has become much easier as a result, says Rodrigues, who owns his own gym in Lincoln, R.I., and coauthored The Everything Guide to Being a Personal Trainer. [Read more: Getting Paid to Stay Fit]Â
Angela Haupt is a health reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or reach her at ahaupt@usnews.com.Â
No comments:
Post a Comment