Guardly Blog
It may come as a surprise that elderly abuse cases have seen a huge rise as the Boomer generation has aged passed 65 year old. In 2005, there were 160 violent incidents for every 100,000 seniors, almost 14 times lower than the rate recorded for persons aged 15 to 24 (2,317 per 100,000) according to Statistics Canada. Below, you’ll find The National Center For Elder Abuse 7 areas of abuse as well as a video titled “An Age for Justice: Confronting Elder Abuse in America”.
7 Areas of Abuse:
- Physical abuse – Any act of violence that causes pain, injury, impairment, or disease, including striking, pushing, force-feeding, and improper use of physical restraints or medication.
- Emotional or psychological abuse – Conduct that causes mental anguish including threats, verbal or nonverbal insults, isolation, and humiliation. Some legal definitions require identification of at least 10 episodes of this type of behavior within a single year to constitute abuse.
- Financial or material exploitation – Misuse of an elderly person’s money or assets for personal gain. Acts such as stealing (money, social security checks, possessions) or coercion (changing a will, assuming power of attorney) constitute financial abuse.
- Neglect – Failure of a caretaker to provide for the patient’s basic needs. As in the previous examples of abuse, neglect can be physical, emotional, or financial. Physical neglect is failure to provide eyeglasses or dentures, preventive health care, safety precautions, or hygiene. Emotional neglect includes failure to provide social stimulation (leaving an older person alone for extended periods). Financial neglect involves failure to use the resources available to restore or maintain the well-being of the aging adult.
- Sexual abuse – Nonconsensual intimate contact or exposure or any similar activity when the patient is incapable of giving consent. Family members, friends, institutional employees, and fellow patients can commit sexual abuse
- Self-neglect – Behavior in which seniors compromise their own health and safety, as when an aging adult refuses needed help with various daily activities. When the patient is deemed competent, many ethical questions arise regarding the patient’s right of autonomy and the physician’s oath of beneficence.
- Abandonment – The desertion of an elderly person by an individual who has assumed responsibility for providing care for an elder, or by a person with physical custody of an elder.
How Guardly Can Help: The victim may feel be too scared of their attacker or too helpless to alert family right away if they are being abused. Guardly can be activated discreetly at the click of a button, informing help quietly and safely. The victim can quickly conference with any combination of friends/family/authority and escribe the problem, share photographs of their injuries or even of the abuser to help rectify the issue and report their problem. Guardly’s use of different contact groups ensures that the victim will communicate with the right people at the right time if an incident were to occur. With Guardly, senior’s should feel more confident and empowered when reporting abuse and will quickly receive the safety and security they so greatly deserve.
Related Posts:
Read our customer campus safety study showing how Guardly helped improve emergency response times by 44% at a school.
Curious? Ask for a 15-minute Demo!
