Elderly Victims of Family Violence and Neglect

Abstract

Geriatric abuse is a possible dimension of intrafamily violence within American society. Representative situations are presented here that may go unrecognized as intrafamily violence by human service organizations. Issues relevant for developing protective and preventive strategies for these aged victims are proposed.

Awareness of Elder Abuse Among Community Health and Social Care Staff in Northern Ireland: An Exploratory Study

“…For example, the majority of respondents believed that care-giver stress and the dependency of the older person were high risk factors in elder abuse. However, while research evidence from the USA has shown links between care-giver stress (Block & Sinnott, 1979;Rathbone-McCuan, 1980;Hudson, 1988;Steinmetz, 1988), victim dependency (Hickey & Douglass, 1981;Quinn & Tomita, 1986;Soule & Bennett, 1987;Hudson, 1988) and elder abuse, the findings have been subsequently challenged because of the lack of case-control comparisons with non-abusive relationships (Pillemer, 1993). The tendency by staff to perceive the causes of abuse in terms of individual pathology or family dysfunction (Phillipson, 1997) gests that respondents may not have considered the oppressive potential of community care ideology on victims and carers (Biggs, 1996(Biggs, , 1997 or the disempowering effects of ageism within the health and social welfare professions (Kosberg, 1988;Slevin, 1991, quoted in Hugman, 1995.…”

A Community-Based Education Model for Identification and Prevention of Elder Abuse

“…(p. 131) This lack of agency and staff awareness of and reluctance to recognize the problem is also cited by others (Rathbone-McCuan, 1980;Phillips and Rempusheski, 1986). Rathlione-McCuan (1980) identifies several additional factors that account for difficulties in the detection of elder abuse: agency concerns about confidentiality; constraints on data accessibility; and manpower and resource drains on the agency.…”

Abuse of the Elderly—The Hidden Agenda. I. The Caretakers and the Categories of Abuse

“…This abuse is being performed by relatives, neighbors, and friends (13). Evidence suggests also that it is repetitive rather than a single occurrence (14). Steurer and Austin (15), in a study of 12 cases, divide abuse of the elderly by family members into physical and verbal/psychologic categories.…”

“…Detection and documentation of physical abuse is difficult at best. How to assess cases of possible physical abuse is an area without professional or legal guidelines (14). Yet, action is taken in child abuse and efforts are made to protect the child from further incidents.…”