As serious as physical and sexual abuse was, in a sense it was less damaging than the third form of mistreatment that occurred. What might without distortion or exaggeration be termed emotional abuse probably did the most harm because it was the most pervasive and enduring damage done to students. Even former students who have defended residential schools, in whole or in part, agree that it was one aspect of school life that was hard on all students. A Cree woman who defended both the Thunderchild school, where she had been a student, and the Lebret school, where later she had taught, recalled that the worst aspect of residential school life was the loneliness. A Saulteaux man who attended St Philip's school and later was in charge of recreation at the Duck Lake school recalled that he was 'lonely all the time,' a feeling made all the worse in his case because his school was within sight of his home on the nearby reserve and he could see the house every time he went outside. Another Saulteaux man who attended the same school remembered that one could always hear boys crying from loneliness after lights-out in the dormitory.

       The lack of emotional support and nurturing has had severe consequences for many residential school survivors. For one thing, students who had not learned how to relate to others in a familial setting grew into adults who often did not know how they were to act as parents. The lack of parenting skills has frequently been cited as a major problem affecting Native families and communities down to the present day. The breakdown of families that resulted in spousal and child abuse, desertion, alcoholism, and substance abuse has been a plague in Native communities. A former student of the Sioux Lookout school who became an alcoholic and 'part-time dope-dealer' blamed his wayward and wandering life on the emotional damage that had been done to him in residential school. He finally realised, he said, that 'I was running 'cause I didn't know how to fuckin' love. All these children but I don't know how to love. I was scared. Because I was never taught love. My parents died. Nobody loved me. Nobody ever held me, (pause). The only white man ever held me was a priest and the only reason he held me was he was tryin' to stick his cock up my ass. And they wonder why we drink. 'Jer,' the speaker of these words, seems exceptional only in his vehemence. A high proportion of former residential school students who have survived to tell of their lives have gone through long periods of alcohol abuse before finding a way out of their crisis. A psychiatrist who worked for the Indian Health Service in the American south-west explained the connection between an emotional void, which was for most the residential school experience, and later descent into abusive behaviour, including serious problems with alcohol. 'Drinking is another way to suckle nurturance,' he noted.