ELDER ABUSE IN CARE HOMES

Contemporary issues in Health, Wellbeing and Social Care

Contemporary issues in Health, Wellbeing and Social Care

Introduction

Today, to keep up with the demands of life and rhythms of the society, people tend too often to get rid of habits and responsibilities and replacing them with means that considered to be "modern". For example, unlike in the past, where the values were deeply connected to the community, the church and the family, today the task of taking care of parents and grandparents is often delegated to specialized institutions, such as nursing homes or nursing homes for elderly people, where people feel confident that the personnel in the caring homes will take care of all the health related matters of the loved ones (Senior Living, 2013).

Discussion

The reality about nursing homes and homes for the elderly seems far from its original cause. There are some people who see the elderly caring homes as an active and interesting ingredient in the lives of the elderly people. However, on the contrary, the elderly admitted to some of these structures appear submissive, silent, as absent or dead. While fixing the vacuum and deeply introverted and withdrawn, for them caring homes seems not fulfilling their real job. These conditions may be caused not only by drugs, including the use of treatments such as electroshock (ECT, electroconvulsive therapy) and the use of, or the threat of the using different methods of repression that could be sometimes harmful and painful. Rather than the failure of nursing homes and caring staff, this stems from the introduction of psychiatric care in treating the elderly in recent decades. As per the literature, the author gathered data from different sources that might help the readers in better understanding that what actually the elder facing the abuse in the care homes. Consider these facts about the "treatments" that the elderly receive in care home:

In Canada, between 2005 and March 20066, 628,000 prescriptions were written in a single tranquilizer that creates a lot of dependence, of which over 35% was intended for patients over the age of 65 years.

The office of forensic pathology shows the benzodiazepines as the most frequent cause of unnatural death every year, surpassing in this list cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and any other illegal drug.

Antidepressants of the day, such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), cause suicidal thinking and behavior. For example, according to a British study, Paxil (paroxetine) can lead to suicide the people who take it, seven times more than those taking a placebo (sugar pill).

In the United States, people 65 years of age receive electroshock 360% of times in more than 64 years, because at that age, treatment costs are reimbursed by government health (Examiner, 2012; Irish Times, 2012).

It's not really the Incompetence

This extensive abuse of the elderly is not the result of incompetence on the part of doctors. The medical literature, in fact, explicitly calls for caution in prescribing psychotropic drugs for the elderly use because of the many serious side ...