Maltreatment of the elderly has become a consequential incident with considerable effect and prevalence. Adina Carmen et al. (2017) describes the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a single, or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust and care, which causes harm or distress to an older person” (p. 1). On the other hand, Adina Carmen et al. (2017) defines negligence as “the lack of action of the person involved in a relationship of trust, which leads to the same result” (p.1). The most common type of abuse is physical abuse makes up approximately 15% of reported cases of elderly abuse. Other types of elderly abuse include abandonment, emotional abuse, financial manipulation, sexual assault, and negligence. Emotional problems stem from inadequate psychosocial support, maltreatment, abandonment, contempt from family members. These problems end up causing distress and harm to the older individual.
Elderly abuse might manifest in different severity and distinctness depending on class and culture—Khan and Bhat (2018) state that abuse can be indirect or direct. Indirect maltreatment affects the elderly individual psychologically and emotionally. On the other hand, direct abuse occurs occasionally depending on the family’s circumstances. Emotional abuse towards the elderly is based on deprivation of fundamental basic needs, bodily harm, neglect, and marginalization. Since the older people in the community are at a point in life where they cannot fend for themselves, they are at a higher risk of being emotionally abused by their family and caregivers. The community, especially in countries where the elderly are locked in institutions, usually forgets their needs. Therefore, their rights and legal needs are forgotten, making it difficult to deal with the different atrocities committed against them. Since their family, the community, and the country as a whole mostly ignore the issues experienced by the elderly, it leaves older people living insecure lives and becoming prone to different diseases. This kind of emotional abuse becomes the most severe of them all.
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References
Adina Carmen, I. L. I. E., Pîslaru, A. I., Alexa, I. D., Pancu, A., Gavrilovici, O., & Dronic, A. (2017). The Psychological Abuse of the Elderly–a Silent Factor of Cardiac Decompensation. Maedica , 12 (2), 119.
Khan, A. M., & Bhat, N. A. (2018). Theorizing Elder Abuse in the Indian Context. In Abuse and Neglect of the Elderly in India (pp. 29-43). Springer, Singapore.
