Are there any instances at all where a therapist will report emotional abuse?

I can only speak from a perspective of a lay person on this one as I am not a lawmaker and I’m not a therapist.

That said — emotional abuse is notoriously hard to do anything about. There are several reasons for that so it likely across all of the US and Canada where emotional abuse goes unreported. Why is that?

According to Mitch Artman, therapists are not mandated to report physical abuse for a non-child or a non-elder. If you told your therapist that you had just murdered someone then this would be inadmissible, they are only mandated to report credible harms to self or others.

Well first, emotional abuse is extremely subjective. This means that it largely depends on the receivers understanding of what they have had happening, how much it triggers them in a negative way, and whether or not any actual trauma is incurred from the treatment — as well as it depends on the receivers interpretation of the givers intent.

In simple terms — what doesn’t hurt you might cripple me in terms of emotional abuse. What you find offensive I might find absolutely fine. What crosses a line for you might be perfectly fine for everyone else.

So you see, the question is — what is emotional abuse in terms of the law? How does it get defined in such a way that it is understandable to all those judges out there that would have to be able to read and interpret the law and to apply it consistently, within a punishment system which is fair across the board between victims and offenders.

How can a person write such a law on something so subjective? It really nearly impossible to capture within some realm of fairness what would actually constitute as emotional abuse.

Factors that need to be considered:

1. Often times the victim stays by choice (by a trauma bond or inability to maintain current lifestyle if leaves) — how does one rate a situation where the victim continuously subjects themselves to that treatment? If they don’t like it they can leave if they so choose.
2. How does the law handle it when the abuser inevitably says they didn’t mean it. That what they said they had no way of knowing would traumatize their victim and it was all an accident. It was the victims over sensitivity that allowed them to be traumatized. How does the law handle that argument when it comes up because can you truly do emotional abuse if you were oblivious you were causing damage?
3. Trauma bond — how would one prove or quantify that someone was trauma bonded and couldn’t leave because they were compelled to stay by the trauma bond? How does one prove that and how does one prove how badly they were bonded?
4. Resiliency- some people can take a lot more and not be phased by it and would never call it emotional abuse where others the minute they have their feelings hurt are screaming they have been abused. How does severity get weighed in on something so subjective. How can some clearly defined laws be carved out that are fair when one victim claims because they were swore at that they were emotionally abused and another one can be gaslit so they don’t know up from down and they say they are fine? How does one capture that?
5. Then there is intent — how do we know if the victim is insulted from hearing what they don’t want to hear vs actually having been had some emotional abuse?
6. Imbalance of Power — I for one believe this is critical to whatever definition of emotional abuse gets created as an imbalance of power is a direct affect over the victim and unless there is a significant barrier or imbalance of power present then there would be no abuse. Abuse is when someone has power or authority over another person and they abuse that power and authority to coerce or manipulate the victim into doing things against their will. I believe a clause like this would be critical.
7. Reactive abuse — how does that factor into the emotional abuse equation as often times the reactive abuse can be as strong or even stronger than it is. Does the victim girt a free pass or does the abuser now have a case to charge the victim for doing that exact same abuse back? Is reactive abuse a lesser sentence or is abuse is abuse?
8. Levels of abuse — how are those defined and quantified? is it just them swearing and are you participating — so Yes? Or what if you participated and swore too? Then that would definitely not be considered abuse?. Is Abuse then when they are screaming at you while you stay silent? or is you staying silent abuse? I’m sure you can see how this becomes an undefinable problem very quickly.

Currently most jurisdictions state that there has to be some type of physical aspect to go with the emotional aspect of emotional abuse. Although recently there has been some tried and won cases where the victim was slandered and they were given a monetary sum for suing. Again though that isn’t criminal court. There are however some laws starting to change that grossly negligent, and obviously attacks on a persons character etc. qualify.

So you see, its not that therapists are choosing not to report emotional abuse — its that there are no laws that are set up or equipped to handle those major variances in what emotional abuse is. In other words, they have no where to report it as there likely are not laws being broken. Your therapist could literally just have no options to report emotional abuse because there is no where to report emotional abuse as there is no definition which ensure that it gets applied consistently and fairly to all claims of emotional abuse.

Long story short — your therapist has no place to report emotional abuse to — so even if they wanted to the legal system does not recognize it the way in which you are wanting it to .