Critical analysis of the selected problem or issues
This report brings out the current literature on neglect of elderly people in nursing homes and rest homes. The report includes certain risk factors such as physical factors, psychological abuse and emotional factors, which has resulted to the increase in the population of elderly people in nursing homes. Every person such as man, woman, and child deserves to be treated with respect and care. Every person deserves to remain safe no matter, how old or young, rich or poor is the individual. Elderly people are alone, isolated and depressed due to misbehaviour on the part of their children. The growing changes in life style and western culture have resulted in complex relationships between elder parents and working adults. Although, some social groups such as institutional groups, old-aged homes actively participated in improving the living condition of elderly people but these old age homes are not showing very positive results.
Elderly people always remained the integral part of the society. Parents who expect and anticipate care, love, and support from their siblings are finding other shelter for themselves to live. However, in the last decades, the researchers started addressing the issue due to increasing population, which is neglected. Only 30% of elderly people are paid through pension schemes. Responsibility of taking care of elderly people and protecting them has fallen on the shoulders of adults in the family. In order to avoid the responsibility, family send their elderly parents to old age homes and other institutions to take care. Adults expect that after paying these care institutions, the responsible of institutions becomes an obligation. However, despite of payment made by the family, the elderly people suffers from the abuse and neglect in nursing homes. Growing in the number of old aged homes and increasing in demand of institutional care providers have just become a source of making money (Pillemer, Burnes, Riffin, & Lachs, 2016).
The abuse can be either intentional or intentional. The abuse may relate to physical abuse, through either omission or commission, which is referred to as neglect act, psychological acts including emotional or verbal aggression (Abuse of the elderly, 2018).
Institutional elder abuse refers to mistreatment that happens in residential homes such as nursing homes, assisted living, and care homes. Generally, people who are held responsible and have the legal obligation to take care of elderly people the abuses in institutions. The type of elder abuse in nursing homes and institutions ranges from physical, emotional, and sexual to isolation and neglect from caregivers. Financial exploitation occurs when a caregiver tries to take undue advantage and steal the money from patient`s room. Moreover, elderly may suffer injury, pain, loss that will lead to violation of human rights, and decreased quality life of elderly people. The behaviour is known as neglecting and ignoring and disrespecting depends on how frequently this type of mistreatment happens, severity, and consequences (American psychological Association, 2018). To identify and detect the elderly abuse and neglect, the perception of families, care providers, and health providers differs (Aas, 2018). The three broad categories may be-
- Violation of human, medical, and legal rights (Schofield, 2017).
- Disrespect of choices, status, decisions, and finances.
Logical and sequential arrangement of arguments and discussions
Other exploitation includes depiction and threat of abuse treatment, fear of abandon by the caretaker, shame, and avoidance of embarrassment contributing to neglect of elderly people (Glauser, & Hustey, 2016). Exploitation such as-
- Material exploitation- It refers to exploitation where elder people`s money, assets, property is used without allowing the control. Placing the older person`s health at risk by not providing the basic care. Adults do not have mercy in their hearts, older people with disabilities and frailty, giving improper care, non-nutritional food, and lack of strength to fight disease, lack of medical care, and lack of love to older people. Although generational conflicts has been screened in movies, dramas, and plays.
- Financial deprivation- Deprivation of enough resources leads to lack of basic facilities and ineffective quality of life. This is such a wrong behaviour to hide the basic facilities from the elderly people. Property grabbing is another wrong behaviour on the part of adults and making the elderly people homeless. Improper exploitation and use of money that is owned by an elderly person becomes financial abuse. Elderly people walking on the roads are the victim of theft, fraud, undue advantage, and physical coercion, which people do to get personal gain, which is not at all morally satisfying. Financial abuse of elderly people is seen many times or overtime rather than a single time. Acts such as robbery, carjacking, and purse snatching are illegal and denote the financial abuse.
- Isolation and physical pain- Isolation leads to cutting off and separating the elderly people from the family, social environment and different community activities. Physical abuse includes physical pain, and injury. Physical tortures such as slapping, hitting, restraining, bruising, and other types of physical abuse that result in injury and pain. Sexual abuse, raping an aged woman, sexual molesting are not only physically abusive, but also is a mental or psychological abusive (Lacher, Wettstein, Senn, Rosemann, & Hasler, 2016).
- Emotional and psychological torment- Threatening, increasing insecurity, increasing strain and stress, humiliating behaviour breaks the trust of older people for adults (Spreng, Karlawish, & Marson, 2016). Verbal humiliation is a kind of emotional hurting which includes being rude, insulting, disrespectful, and adopting in sensitive behaviour towards the elderly person. Verbal abuse is characterised by imposing mental torture. This type of mental torture also affects the psychological base of a person. Humiliation, threats, yelling, eve teasing, and intimidation are some examples of verbal abuse. Sometimes, adults keep their children away from their grandparents. These isolating situations cause psychological pressure and distress and even lead to serious issues such as depression (Hamby, Smith, Mitchell, & Turner, 2016).
The population of older people is the fastest growing population in old-age homes. Elderly people require care, respect, and love from the society. More often, neglect is unintentional due to insufficient available staff. Neglect situation occurs when patient`s needs are not taken care of such as proper medication on time and personal hygiene care. Moreover, the elders are provided with proper healthy food, clothing, and clean water. Neglect and misbehaviour on the part of nursing staff suffers from broken bones, frequent infection, signs of dehydration, unexplained weight loss, changes in mental status, and poor physical status and lack of hygienic environemt (Dong, Chen, & Simon, 2014).
An elderly person suffers from many types of abuses such as physical abuse, elder mistreatment, geriatric trauma, non-accidental geriatric injury, and ill-treatment to get a financial benefit. These abuses lead to stress and frustration along with the other problems. This stress, frustration, and childish behaviour of elders lead nursing staff members to stay away even during their sufferings. Three major issues that are closely related to abuse and neglect of elderly people are neglect, financial exploitation, and physical abuse. The reason behind the violence and abuse towards elderly people resulted in adult abused by the parent, responsibility, which has become a force for adults to take care of elderly people (Yan, Chan, & Tiwari, 2015). Neglect is different form of abuse, which many elderly people suffer from, due to wrong behaviour on the part of old-aged staff. Continuous neglect over a long time can cause death. Certain changes in cultural and societal attitudes can contribute to wrong behaviour against the elderly people on the part of adults. Modern western culture, lifestyle, and accommodation in multigenerational household have negative impact on the family virtues (Davoren et al., 2015). In the above discussion, it has become very clear that risk of leaving elderly people in nursing homes results in neglect and abuse. Elderly people are given overdose of medicines and they are often not checked which lead to adverse side effects. Elderly people in nursing homes are left with no help regarding toileting. Continuous wearing of same disposable diaper even after urine passes lead to skin breakdown in diaper area. The lives of these elderly people become immobile due to lack of regular exercise programs. They live in poor hygiene including bad smell of urine and feces, dirty body odour, overgrown dirty nails (Texas Health and Human Services, 2018).
Martial violence and generational gap can lead to be become a factor, which adversely effect on elder abuse. Sometimes, when a woman has been abused for many years, she is not likely to take care of elder people when their health fails. Expense incurred during the nourishment and overmedication may lead to abusing elders. These financial burdens of medication and generational households can lead to trigger elder abuse. Such situation of lack of resources with the adults becomes difficult to pay and render the medication. Many adults who were badly treated in their childhood treat their elderly parents with respect. There may be a marital stress between the older couple when they live with their adults (Abuse of the elderly, 2018).
These days, older people are more active, visible, and independent than before. They are living a better life without their children in much better conditions. However, as the world population is increasing, so does the number of old aged homes and institutional care providers (Jackson, 2016). There are certain cultural morals, believe system and traditions, which directly or indirectly influence the family dynamics, generational relationships, and the challenges regarding roles and responsibilities of adults. Society has forgotten the significance of providing the dignity, support, non-abusive life to every elder person. Sometimes the older person is kept either locked or separated from the children, which is not at less than neglectful situation. People who notices these abusive things apart from the family members fail to intervene or take any action because they believe that they should not interrupt in other`s family issues and even they are afraid of misinterpreting a private fights. Shame and embarrassment on the part of adult people makes it difficult for elder people to reveal the neglect and abuse. Moreover, elder people are not involved in events in the family (Huang, Tsai, Liu, & Chen, 2017).
Some elder non-indigenous people such as tribal people, aboriginal people, and Torres strain islanders face language barriers and financial dependence on the adults. The definition of abuse and neglect in elderly people vary across different culture and religious communities. It is mandatory to ignore such signs of abuse, which sounds unethical or abusive by they are not. Some cultures do not respect the basic human and women rights, old women don`t realise the importance of basic rights may not even realise that they are abused. In order to solve these problems related to neglect and abuse of elderly people (Roy, 2017).
The society has to promote social attitude, positive steps regarding achieving educational goals for elder people. The adults should develop and increase the availability of relief care, promote social contact and support from the families. Moreover, to promote social attitude, the society can take steps such as educating people about their ignorance, which are subjected to physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, and emotional abuse. Old age homes should promote social meetings through various events such as conducting workshops, sports meet, religious sessions, theatre sessions on different plays and recreational sessions on yoga, exercises. Promotion of increased social contact, support from families, counselling sessions to treat elderly people with personal and family problems will help to the elder people to feel a support socially (Pradeep, & Raj, 2016).
Various counselling sessions contribute to overcome the fear of abuse and neglect from adults. Acceptance and understanding is biggest power especially in relationships. To maintain any relationship, both the individual in the relationship has to bend towards each other. Each individual has to adjust in a relationship. Moreover, the intensity of respect, love, and care in the relation to elder parents on the part the adult becomes a responsibility (Hamby, Smith, Mitchell, & Turner, 2016).
According to WHO, it estimated around 15.7% people of 60 years and older than 60 years are subjected to abuse. These prevailing rates are mostly underestimated, as many elder abuse cases are not reported. WHO agrees on metrics, measures, solutions, and analytical approaches for healthy people. WHO tries to improve the intrinsic capacity and functional abilities for the whole life in different sectors such as health and social sector. To accomplish these approaches, WHO planned to work with range of stakeholders to develop manuals and normative tools and undertake an advance research on sufferings of elderly people (WHO, 2018).
To overcome the problems related to Ignorance and misbehaviour among the elderly people led to formation of certain policies such as various public and professional campaigns, school-based intergenerational programmes, caregivers training (WHO, 2018). Apart from these campaigns, the statistics in world health organisation related to abuse lead to the formation of policies in different countries such as the Australian network for prevention of elderly abuse in 1998, New Zealand National Elder Abuse and Neglect Advisory Council in 1990s, International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA) in 1997. In UK, Actions on Elder Abuse, which is a national non-governmental organisation focused to overcome the problem of isolation, social exclusion, and abandonment (Hoover, & Polson, 2014).
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that, the elderly people has been suffering from the abuse and neglect since last many decades. The adult should realise the importance of dignity, respect, and love for the elderly parents. Elderly abuses have taken different form such as physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, and financial abuse. To resolve the problem of elderly abuse and ignorance, counselling for neglected behaviour and personal problems of elderly people can give them moral support by listening to them. Isolation and negligence is more abusing than verbal abusing and has greater probability. Conducting social interactions for elderly people help them to change the behavioural patterns of elderly people as they start finding solution from the current isolations.
References
Aas, G. (2018). The Norwegian police and victims of elder abuse in close and familial relationships. Journal of elder abuse & neglect, 30(1), 20-41.
Abuse of the elderly, (2018). World report on violence and health. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/chap5.pdf?ua=1
American psychological Association, (2018). Elder abuse and neglect: in search of solutions. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/pi/aging/resources/guides/elder-abuse.aspx
Davoren, M., Fitzpatrick, M., Caddow, F., Caddow, M., O’Neill, C., O’Neill, H., & Kennedy, H. G. (2015). Older men and older women remand prisoners: mental illness, physical illness, offending patterns and needs. International psychogeriatrics, 27(5), 747-755.
Dong, X., Chen, R., & Simon, M. A. (2014). Elder abuse and dementia: a review of the research and health policy. Health Affairs, 33(4), 642-649.
Glauser, J., & Hustey, F. M. (2016). Abuse of the Elderly and Impaired. Tintinalli’s emergency medicine: A comprehensive study guide, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Hamby, S., Smith, A., Mitchell, K., & Turner, H. (2016). Poly-victimization and resilience portfolios: Trends in violence research that can enhance the understanding and prevention of elder abuse. Journal of elder abuse & neglect, 28(4-5), 217-234.
Hoover, R. M., & Polson, M. (2014). Detecting elder abuse and neglect: assessment and intervention. American family physician, 89(6).
Huang, L. B., Tsai, Y. F., Liu, C. Y., & Chen, Y. J. (2017). Influencing and protective factors of suicidal ideation among older adults. International journal of mental health nursing, 26(2), 191-199.
Jackson, S. L. (2016). All elder abuse perpetrators are not alike: the heterogeneity of elder abuse perpetrators and implications for intervention. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 60(3), 265-285.
Lacher, S., Wettstein, A., Senn, O., Rosemann, T., & Hasler, S. (2016). Types of abuse and risk factors associated with elder abuse. Swiss Med Weekly, 146(1).
Pillemer, K., Burnes, D., Riffin, C., & Lachs, M. S. (2016). Elder abuse: global situation, risk factors, and prevention strategies. The Gerontologist, 56(2), 194-205.
Pradeep, M. D., & Raj, C. (2016). Recent trends of Socio-Economic Empowerment of Elderly-Interventions towards broad based benefits in India. International Journal of Current Research and Modern Education, 1, 692-700.
Roy, S. K. (2017). Vulnerability of Elderly Women: Victim of Gender Discrimination. Hasanuddin Law Review, 3(1), 1-13.
Schofield, M. J. (2017). Screening for elder abuse: tools and effectiveness. In Elder Abuse (pp. 161-199). Switzerland: Springer.
Spreng, R. N., Karlawish, J., & Marson, D. C. (2016). Cognitive, social, and neural determinants of diminished decision-making and financial exploitation risk in aging and dementia: A review and new model. Journal of elder abuse & neglect, 28(4-5), 320-344.
Texas Health and Human Services, (2018). Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation (ANE) in Long?Term Care. Retrieved from: https://hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/QMP/ANEPPT.pdf
WHO, (2018). Ageing and life-course: elder abuse. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/ageing/projects/elder_abuse/en/
Yan, E., Chan, K. L., & Tiwari, A. (2015). A systematic review of prevalence and risk factors for elder abuse in Asia. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 16(2), 199-219.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
