Sexual Abuse: Sexual abuse represents any kind of sexual contact between an adult or older teen and a child. This behaviour is used to gain power over the child and often involves a betrayal of the child's trust. There are many types of sexual abuse, some include physical contact or touching offenses. This includes fondling, touching sexual organs, masturbation, making the child touch the adult sexually, and vaginal or anal penetration with self or objects. Non touching offenses include exposing a child to pornographic material, indecent exposure, leering and deliberately putting the child in the position of having to witness an act of sexual intercourse.

Effects of sexual abuse:

If an adult is still in a relationship with someone and are being sexually abuse by someone else sex with their partner may feel like an obligation and sexual thoughts and images that are disturbing. They may find it difficult watching sexual scenes on the television or in movies and may freak out at this. A woman may also feel vaginal pain due to forced sexual intercourse; this could last for quite a while and can be very uncomfortable for the woman. For a man being abused outside a relationship they might find erections problems or ejaculatory difficulty when with their partner, this may be both difficult for them and their partner and may be frustrating. When having sexual intercourse with a partner there may be Detachment or emotional distance. When being touched they might feel guilt, fear, anger, disgust or other negative feelings.

Major Long-Term Medical Symptoms of Sexual Abuse may be insomnia. Insomnia is when someone has difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. Insomnia is a common problem for survivors of rape and sexual abuse. This is can be caused by fear, stress, anxiety, feelings of guilt, and inability to let go of what happened in the past. Some victims of sexual abuse may develop eating disorders due to feeling bad about themselves and may be so distressed they just cannot eat properly. Some people may find it difficult to eat anything while others may eat a lot to help comfort them. Some victims of sexual abuse may experience lower back pain and/or chest pressure due to having someone forcing themselves onto them and physically hurting them. Some people may experience panic attacks if they believe something is going to happen them again or they see the person who abused them. Panic attacks may also come on just by thinking about what happened to them.

Bullying: Bullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person. Some of the ways they bully other people are by: calling them names, saying or writing nasty things about them, leaving them out of activities, not talking to them, threatening them, making them feel uncomfortable or scared, taking or damaging their things, hitting or kicking them, or making them do things they don't want to do. Bullying ranges from simple one-on-one bullying to more complex bullying in which the bully may have one or more standbys who may seem to be willing to assist the primary bully in his or her bullying activities. Bullying in school and the workplace is also referred to as peer abuse.

Effects of Bullying:

The experience of being bullied can end up causing lasting damage to victims. This is both self-evident, and also supported by an increasing body of research. It is not necessary to be physically harmed in order to suffer lasting harm. Words and gestures are quite enough. In fact, the old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me" is more or less exactly backwards. There are two ugly outcomes that stem from learning to view yourself as a less than desirable, incapable individual. The first ugly outcome is that it becomes more likely that you will become increasingly susceptible to becoming depressed and/or angry and/or bitter. Being bullied teaches you that you are undesirable, that you are not safe in the world, and (when it is dished out by forces that are physically superior to yourself) that you are relatively powerless to defend yourself.

Some adults who are being or have been bullied may start to self-harm and may have suicidal thoughts and feelings. The person may be so fed up with the bullying and feel so worthless that they do not see the point in living anymore. Self-harming may be away of the person releasing their anger and pain. In the long-term they may find it difficult interacting with other people in the fear of something hurtful being said to them and will find it difficult trusting other people. They may also have an increased tendency of wanting to be alone as they may feel that they are at less risk of being bullied.

D1
All abuse can cause long or short term effect on the individual experiencing it. For my D1 task I have been asked to evaluate the long term effects of physical and emotion abuse on the individual experiencing it.

If an individual is experiencing physical abuse such as being slapped or kicked it cause the person experiencing it to develop stress. Stress is your body's way of responding to any kind of demand. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. These chemicals give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing if their stress is caused by physical danger. But this can also be a bad thing, if their stress is in response to something emotional and there is no outlet for this extra energy and strength. Stress causes effects on the body such as aches and pains, diarrhoea or constipation, Nausea, dizziness, Chest pain, rapid heartbeat and frequent colds due to a weakened immune system. Stress is also linked to cause high blood pressure which in turn can also lead to long term health problem such as stroke, heart attacks and also kidney disease as it affects the small blood vessels in your kidney which may stop them working properly. Long-term exposure to stress can lead to serious health problems. Chronic stress disrupts nearly every system in your body. It can raise blood pressure, weaken the immune system, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, contribute to infertility, and speed up the aging process. Long-term stress can even affect the brain and leave you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. According to research completed by Professor John Weinman (2010) who done a study on people who were stressed and people who were not. He found out that the people who were not experiencing stress, their cuts or bruising healed in almost double the time rather than the people who were experiencing stress. This is thought to be as stress weakens the immune systems in helping the health process or recovering from an illness.

People often just assume that physical abuse is just physically hitting another person but it can also include forcing them to take too much medication that is not needed nor prescribed to them. An overdose of medication can be serious life threatening. An overdose can cause an individual problem with their vital signs i.e. temperature, pulse rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure. A persons vital sign values can be increased, decreased, or completely absent due to the overdose. Vomiting blood is a main sign that an overdose has taken place as it usually means that there is bleeding somewhere in your gullet, stomach or the first part of your bowel.

Disturbed sleep patterns can also be another affect on the body due to physical abuse. You may not be able to sleep as you think your attacker will come and attack you or be having nightmares of the abuse you are experiencing. Lack of sleep can affect the body by affecting your mental processes. Mood is diminished and you feel sluggish. Thinking is slower, it's harder to concentrate and there's a feeling of mental fogginess.

Memory problems are also a result from lack of sleep, not only with memory recall, but with storage. During sleep, memories are transferred to long-term storage. Sleep deprivation, which can also be caused by nightmares, can cause a lot of other medical conditions, including heart disease, depression, and obesity if it is continued over a long period of time.

Emotional or psychological abuse is any action which has an adverse effect on an individual's mental well-being, causes suffering and effects their quality of life and ability to function to their full potential. It often leads the individuals experiencing it to develop depression due to the constant put down of being told for example there not good enough in time the individual experiencing this will start to believe this and begin to question their abilities. Depression affects people in different ways and can cause a wide variety of symptoms. They range from lasting feelings of sadness and hopelessness to losing interest in the things you used to enjoy and feeling very tearful. Many people with depression also have symptoms of anxiety. There can be physical symptoms too such as feeling constantly tired, sleeping badly, having no appetite and complaining of various aches and pains. In the long term depression can lead to chronic fatigue which can cause the individual not to be able to carry out daily activities as they care constantly feel tired or worn out. A decreased appetite can lead them to develop mal nutrition deficiency such as anaemia. Anaemia is when your body lacks iron and can cause effects on the body such as a weakened immune system, problems in women with pregnancy and also lung and heart complications.

Depression may also lead the individual to turn to and abuse alcohol. They may feel like alcohol blocks out the abuse they are experiencing but in turn they are just causing damage to their body. Alcohol interferes with the brainâs communication pathways, and can affect the way the brain looks and works. These disruptions can change mood and behaviour, and make it harder to think clearly and move with coordination. The main affect of binge drinking is on the liver daily large consumptions of alcohol can cause cirrhosis. This is the scarring of the liver as a result of continuous, long-term liver damage mainly from binge drinking. Scar tissue replaces healthy tissue in the liver and prevents the liver from working properly. The damage caused by cirrhosis is permanent and can't be reversed. Cirrhosis progresses slowly, over many years, gradually causing your liver to stop functioning. This is called liver failure. Every year, around 1,000 people in the UK die from cirrhosis. Around 700 people need to have a liver transplant to survive.

Suicide for many people who committee it is the easy way to get rid of their problem and life stresses by taking their own life. People who experience abuse may experience suicidal thought such as overdosing on medication or cutting themselves. The most obvious consequence of cutting yourself is bleeding to death. People may cut themselves to feel physical pain that will overshadow their emotional pain. However, there's always the risk of cutting an artery and unintentionally bleeding to death. Another serious consequence is scarring. Cutting yourself until you bleed leaves a scar behind. The more cuts you make, the more scars will cover your arms and legs. Even superficial cuts will leave scars. Cuts made repeatedly in the same place will leave bigger and do not fade away entirely. Some people self harm themselves by overdosing. Some overdoses are worse than others. Many chemicals burn the oesophagus and stomach. And since chemicals are processed through the liver, an overdose damages the liver, as well as other body parts.
CONCLUSION

All forms of abuse have long term and adverse effects on the health and wellbeing of the person experiencing it. This can range from mal nutrition to serious heart conditions that may lead the individual to death. Abuse is not a pleasant thing to experience and no person deserves to be treated in these ways. People who are in these situations should speak up and seek help as in today world there are a lot of organisations and services available to everyone dealing with these situations.