Objective: This study used bibliometric analysis to map the network structure of research on childhood emotional neglect and abuse and to identify the most influential journals, authors, countries and concepts in the field.Method: The Web of Science Core Collection was searched using the terms “emotional abuse”, “emotional neglect”, “emotional maltreatment”, “psychological maltreatment”, and “verbal abuse” in article titles, with no restriction on publication year.Following expert evaluation, 958 English-language articles that either directly involved children or addressed childhood emotional neglect and abuse in adult samples were included.
Analyses were conducted by employing performance analysis and science-mapping techniques.Results: Child Abuse & Neglect was both the most productive journal in the field and the source cited most frequently within the reference lists of the analysed articles. The largest share of publications originated from the United States, followed by China, Türkiye, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The most frequent author keyword was “emotional abuse”, followed by “depression”, “adolescence”, “emotional neglect” and “psychological maltreatment”. In recent years, the concepts of self-compassion, longitudinal study and childhood psychological abuse have become prominent. Conclusion: The findings provide a framework for understanding the scientific structure of the field.
The study may also help researchers working on childhood emotional abuse to identify research topics and select target journals.