Their problem is that they really believe that there's no other way they can get attention except by verbally abusing others. If people make a point of giving them attention that is in no way linked to hostile language, it will help. Verbal abuse and verbal violence are hostile language that is hurtful to the listener, and that the speaker intends the listener to hear. This includes hostile language said to someone else with the intention that the intended victim will overhear it. Most of the time, however, the two terms are essentially interchangeable.
Verbal abuse can be just as life-threatening as a loaded gun.
It isn't true that nothing really happens, although most of the time it happens more slowly than injuries from loaded guns do. The danger is in chronic exposure to hostile language, no matter what its source. One is just as likely as the other. Anyone at all can be a verbal abuser, including small children and people who are physically very frail. Women are statistically a little more likely to be verbal victims than verbal abusers, especially in public, because they are so often outranked in our society by men, but generally speaking there's little difference.