Quick summary: Emotional neglect can harm children just as deeply as physical abuse even when there are no visible signs, and in Indonesia nearly half of adolescents report experiencing emotional violence during their lifetime, according to national survey data linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety. This matters because mental health problems that surface in the teenage years often trace back to years of unmet emotional needs, meaning healthcare systems that wait for visible symptoms are already responding too late. Recognising emotional neglect as a public health issue rather than a private parenting failure could allow earlier support for families, better training for schools and clinicians, and policy that protects children’s well being before harm becomes entrenched.
Some childhood wounds leave no visible mark. There may be no bruises, no broken bones, no hospital visits. A child may have food on the table, a roof over their head and access to school, and from the outside everything may look fine. But what happens when a child is repeatedly ignored when they are distressed, when their feelings are dismissed, when their mistakes are met with humiliation, or when they grow up believing that asking for comfort is a weakness? What about the child who has food, clothes, an education and a home, but rarely feels emotionally understood?
These experiences are harder to recognise than physical abuse, yet they can matter just as much for a child’s mental health.
Neglect is not only about what a child does not have
When people hear the word neglect, most probably imagine a child who is not adequately fed, clothed or supervised. These forms of neglect are real and important, and they tend to be the easiest to recognise. But children’s needs are not purely physical.
The World Health Organization defines child maltreatment as including abuse and neglect that can harm, or potentially harm, a child’s health, development or dignity. Its definition covers physical and emotional ill treatment as well as neglect, and it notes that the consequences can affect mental and physical health throughout life. Neglect, in other words, is not simply about whether a child has been fed or clothed. A child’s emotional needs matter too.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes emotional needs within its understanding of neglect, while clinical guidance from NICE describes neglect as a persistent failure to meet a child’s physical and psychological needs. Emotional neglect can involve a parent or caregiver being persistently emotionally unavailable or unresponsive.
This distinction matters, because a child can be physically cared for and emotionally neglected at the same time. A child can be told “I provide everything for you, what else do you want?”, and that may be exactly the problem. Sometimes what a child wants is not another material thing. They want someone to listen, someone to ask what is wrong, someone to tell them that being afraid does not make them weak, and someone who does not make them feel guilty for having emotions.
What the numbers from Indonesia show
According to Indonesia’s National Survey of Children’s and Adolescents’ Life Experiences (SNPHAR) 2024, 45.43% of adolescents aged 13 to 17 had experienced at least one form of emotional violence during their lifetime, and almost 3 in 10, 29.97%, had experienced emotional violence within the previous 12 months. Emotional violence was the most commonly reported form of violence in the survey, which is a striking figure given that it represents almost half of an entire generation.
This is something I have become increasingly concerned about, particularly in Indonesia, and it is one of the reasons I want to pursue a Master of Public Health and work more closely on issues surrounding mental health and prevention. A separate analysis of the 2021 SNPHAR data found that 41.6% of adolescents aged 13–17 had experienced emotional violence, alongside 13.8% who had experienced physical violence.
Numbers alone, though, cannot tell us what those experiences feel like. A study of 1,837 adolescents in West Java offers a closer look. Researchers found psychological maltreatment among 89.4% of participants aged 12–14 and 82.9% of those aged 15–17 in their sample, including being ignored, shouted at, insulted, threatened with abandonment and made to feel bad or lonely.
The study found significant associations between psychological maltreatment and mental health problems, though the researchers described these correlations as weak and acknowledged that other factors, including socioeconomic and family characteristics, were not included in their analysis. I would not say, then, that emotional neglect automatically causes depression or anxiety. Mental health is far more complicated than that.
The wider evidence, however, is concerning. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 96 studies found that child maltreatment was associated with depressive disorders, with neglect linked to higher odds of depression, and neglect was also significantly associated with anxiety disorders. Another meta-analysis found that emotional abuse and neglect were among the childhood experiences most strongly associated with depression, describing them as among the more “silent” forms of childhood maltreatment. Among young people specifically, a meta-analysis of 87 studies involving more than 213,000 participants found that early life adversity was associated with more than twice the odds of depression before the age of 18.
Why this matters beyond the individual child
This is the part that makes me want to study public health. Indonesia already carries a substantial burden of mental health problems among adolescents. The Indonesia National Adolescent Mental Health Survey found that 34.9% of adolescents aged 10–17 experienced symptoms of a mental disorder within the previous 12 months, while 5.5% met criteria for a mental disorder, with anxiety the most common.
Putting these findings together, I keep asking how much of the mental health burden we see later in life could be prevented by creating healthier environments earlier. Not every child who experiences emotional violence will develop depression, and not every child who experiences neglect will develop anxiety. Nor does every struggling family deserve blame. Families themselves may be dealing with financial hardship, stress, limited support, poor mental health or parenting patterns passed down through generations. That is why I do not see this simply as a problem of bad parents. I see it as a public health problem.
Acting before children become patients
As someone who hopes to pursue a Master of Public Health, this is increasingly where my concern lies. Healthcare often becomes involved once a problem is already visible, once a child develops significant anxiety, a teenager becomes depressed, a young person stops attending school, or someone finally asks for help. By then, we may already be treating the consequences of years of experiences that were difficult to see.
I want to understand what can be done before that point is reached. How can parents be helped to develop healthier ways of responding to children’s emotions? How can schools recognise children who may be struggling at home? How can healthcare professionals identify emotional neglect when there is no physical injury? How can public health programmes support families before stress becomes harmful? And perhaps most importantly, how can children’s emotional well-being become something society treats as a basic part of health, rather than a luxury that comes after food, education and physical safety?
I do not have all the answers yet, and that is exactly why I want to study public health. I want to learn how research can become prevention, how prevention can become policy, and how policy can reach families before a child needs treatment. When almost half of Indonesian adolescents report experiencing emotional violence during their lifetime, these experiences cannot simply be treated as part of growing up. Children deserve more than to survive childhood. They deserve to feel safe, to be heard, and to have a public health system that takes seriously the wounds that cannot be seen.
Noorharsy Taqillah is a medical graduate from Indonesia preparing for a Master of Public Health in Japan, with interests in mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions. Through her writing she aims to make health and psychology topics more accessible while sharing personal experiences.
