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MRM//McCann partnered with NO MORE, the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, to launch a new campaign about verbal abuse awareness.
The launch includes the NOMOREVerbalAbuse.org website, which provides information about verbal abuse, how to recognize healthy and unhealthy relationships, survivor stories, and a toolkit with shareable resources. It also includes a new #NOMOREVerbalAbuse Pledge, which encourages visitors to join the movement to raise awareness and prevent verbal abuse. In addition, Amazon’s Alexa now features the opportunity for supporters to “Register Their Voice” against verbal abuse using their devices.
The awareness effort is part of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, an annual international campaign that kicked off on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until December 10, International Human Rights Day.
Psychological violence is estimated to be the most common form of intimate partner violence in the United States and Europe, affecting 35-49% of men and women. The research on verbal abuse is limited, however, in part because so many cases go unreported.
Verbal abuse refers to the ways in which a person uses their words to cause harm. It is one tactic in a range of deliberate behaviors that a person may use to gain and maintain power and control over another in an intimate relationship. Verbal abuse is one aspect of psychological abuse, and is characterized by insults, name-calling, put-downs, criticizing, and other demeaning language designed to bully, intimidate, frighten, humiliate, degrade, and diminish the victim’s self-worth and sense of safety.