It’s a scary situation. The New York Times and the Boston Globe both have reported on a dramatic rise in senior abuse across the nation. Our elderly loved ones are especially vulnerable due to their dependency on caregivers in their daily lives.
If you’re involved with caring for a senior, you should be careful to spot abuse. It’s not only neglect or mistreatment that comes from the hands of paid caregivers or nursing home aides, either. Because the majority of seniors use family members as their primary caregivers, your loved one could be at risk from someone you know.
We talked with Emily Saltz, LICSW, the director of
Elder Resources, a Massachusetts-based geriatric care management practice. She gave us the warning signs to watch out for and tips for how families and caregivers can help keep our elders happy, healthy, and safe.
What is senior abuse?
Elder abuse, in general, is when a caregiver harms an elderly person. That harm can come in many different forms. Elder abuse can be physical, it can be emotional or verbal, it can be financial exploitation, or it could be neglect.
How can you spot abuse?
If it's physical abuse, you're looking for changes in established patterns, which could be changes in the behavior or personality of the elder—if they seem more fearful or afraid. One of the most common things we look for is unexplained injury.
For emotional abuse, what we tend to see is threatening kinds of behavior. That's a little harder to note, but over time, you can see someone who's really controlling an elder.
With neglect, you basically see someone who is left alone in unsanitary living conditions. They might have a physical problem like bedsores or may have lost weight.
And with financial exploitation, we see checks being written out that shouldn't, unexplained withdrawals from the account, lots of unpaid bills, or the elder telling you that someone came by and took money.
It sounds like it’s easier to spot wrongdoing when you have regular communication with your elderly loved ones.
That’s right. Abuse usually comes to light when someone who has an ongoing relationship with the elder.
Elder abuse is not something that most elders would ever talk about comfortably. It's shameful [to them]. Usually they are very dependent on the person doing the abusing, which creates an even more complicated situation that may be difficult for them to talk about.
The other piece of this, though, is that most elder abuse does not occur by bad people. There is a connection between adult children who care for elders and alcoholism or mental illness. But a lot of what occurs in elder abuse is by caregivers who are very stressed by their role and specifically don't know where to turn. There are risk factors in a caregiver that could lead to abuse:
• Inability to cope with stress.
• Depression
• Lack of support or isolation
• Substance abuse and mental illness
• History of violent interactions
In my practice, these risk factors are something that we clue in on right away. If we think any family we are dealing with has these risk factors, that's something we watch very carefully.
What can families do if they think an elder is at risk?
Within families, the most important thing for caregivers is to find help, whether it's from other family members or formal providers. Not being alone, not being isolated, find help, talking to helpers, going to support groups, all of that will diminish their feelings of isolation.
It's also a matter of trying to open up a dialogue with the elder and not shying away from talking about whether or not they're fearful, whether or not if anything is going on that they're not comfortable with, and trying not to be shy about talking about what's going on directly with the elder.
Are there organizations or social services that can step in?
States differ on who is required to report abuse and they differ on the definition of abuse and neglect, so you have to look at your own state.
When do you know it’s time to step in and intervene?
If you feel like something's not right, then that person is not the right caregiver for your mother or father… If you see something you don't like, think about it, talk about it, report it, do whatever you have to, just don't ignore it.
If you think a loved one could be at risk, take the time to talk with them. Keep those communication lines open and be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. We don’t mean to scare you, rather we want to make sure that every single one of our loved ones is safe and has the care they need for a healthy life.
