Abuse of Older Persons: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Human Services of the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh Congress, First Session, March 23, 1981, Cambridge, Mass

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Page 54 - The 1981 report was an attempt to explore what was known about elder abuse. What the Committee found was that elder abuse was far from an isolated and localized problem involving a few frail elderly and their pathological offspring.
Page 11 - O'Malley (1979, p. 2) defines elder abuse as "the willful infliction of physical pain, injury or debilitating mental anguish, unreasonable confinement or willful deprivation by a caretaker of services which are necessary to maintain mental and physical [health...
Page 1 - March 1982 study by the Subcommittee on Human Services of the House Select Committee on Aging found that 10 states were reducing adult day-care services.
Page 45 - ... developed in each community to implement the good intentions of the law. If child protective services are not available, reporters will no longer report. The promise of case-finding legislation, such as reporting laws, is that when a case is found, something is done about it.
Page 54 - ... categories of violation of rights and psychological abuse followed, however, numerous cases were found where all four of these categories were represented. It seems clear that victims seldom report cases of abuse to the authorities. More than 70 percent of all cases were reported by third parties. The elderly who are abused are often ashamed or may not want to bring trouble to their children or they may fear reprisals if they complain. Some seniors do not have the physical ability or sometimes...
Page 33 - The elder's life in the mental hospital is structured as an extended act of dying rather than one of active living. It is not surprising, therefore, that "older persons who enter state hospitals have an excessive death rate, that is, a much larger proportion of them die than would be expected in comparison with age-sex specific death rates.
Page 53 - Many would prefer not to acknowledge that such abuse exists — it is alien to the American ideal. Even abused elderly are reluctant to admit their children, loved ones, and those entrusted with their care have assaulted them. For this reason, the abuse of our elderly at the hands of their children until recent times has remained a shameful and hidden problem. This...
Page 12 - ... indicate the existence of barriers to intervention and resolution of abuse cases. These barriers consist mainly of ethical dilemmas concerning the client's right to refuse service, lack of legal authority and protection for workers, and lack of clear agency policy and procedures for handling cases of elder abuse. The research findings clearly give strong support to the impairment/dependency theory of the etiology of elder abuse. Theories involving individual pathology, demographic and social...
Page 4 - We can no longer consider the issue of domestic violence against the elderly to be a private matter. It is a public policy issue of great concern, and we should pledge our most determined efforts to end the scourge of domestic violence against the elderly.
Page 11 - Verbal or emotional abuse: namecalling, insults, treating as a child, frightening humiliation, intimidation, threats. 4. Physical abuse: being hit, slapped, bruised, sexually molested, cut burned, physically restrained.

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