OMENA
A youth-led, and youth-centered organization that is breaking the cycle of emotional abuse through training, preventive evidence-based social-emotional education, and community support.
Growing up, the only form of abuse that I could recognize was physical abuse. I learned through my training as a Peer Educator that violence often begins with emotional abuse, gradually increasing to violent physical abuse. Through my research, I discovered I was not the only one with a limited definition of abuse. I started being passionate about the subject. I was mind blown by all the things I found out that I decided to share about it. That’s how “Omena” came about.
It’s estimated by the WHO that up to 1 billion children worldwide have suffered in the last year from emotional abuse: 1 billion children most likely with trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and isolation.
Emotional abuse is characterized by name calling, yelling, intimidating, controlling, gaslighting (making the victim doubt his or her reality through manipulation), using the silent treatment to punish the victim or invalidate their emotions, threats, isolating the victim from their community, and manipulating (Bancroft, 2002).
Emotional abuse starts in the household, often having a spillover effect in all the other relationships in our lives and it is passed on from generation to generation.
Emotional abuse is a global crisis. Without the proper resources to prevent abuse there is deep economic impact. In the U.S alone, the CDC estimates the cost of emotional abuse to be $124 billion. Expenses like hospital cost, criminal justice costs and productivity losses means that emotional abuse affects even more than just its direct victims.
