Chapter twelve is about the
special problems that the elderly have.
For example, “the suicide rate of older adults is more than fifty
percent higher than that of the general population” (p.317). Older people are more likely to complete
suicide versus younger people. Many
factors can cause depression and suicide such as chronic illness and pain,
alcoholism, loss of loved ones and social isolation.
The elderly should be taken care
of but they have the risk of being battered by their caregiver. Battered parent syndrome is when they are
abused by their child. Many factors can
increase the risk of a caregiver abusing their elderly parent, such as, “alcohol
and drug abuse, cognitive impairment, economic stress, caregiver inexperience,
a history of family violence, a blaming personality, unrealistic expectations
and economic dependence on the elder” (p.328).
There can be different types of abuse, for example, physical abuse and
psychological abuse. Misusing the elderly
person’s money or property is called financial/material abuse. Violation of rights can happen when all the
rights of the elderly person are taken away.
When adequate food, clothing, medical or dental care and shelter is not
given by the caregiver then that is neglect.
Another form of abuse is granny dumping and that is when an elderly
person is abandoned at a hospital.
Besides suicide and abuse, the
elderly are also at risk of fraud.
Swindlers “use persuasion and emotional influence” (p.331) to cheat the
elderly out of their money. Land fraud
is when “real-estate developers may offer lots for sale in a still-to-be-built retirement
community” and promise attractive amenities but are lying. Home-equity fraud is when a swindler poses as
a financial expert to assist in refinancing their home but instead steals the
cash from the loan or gets the elderly person to unwittingly transfer the title
to their house to them.
This learner found it astonishing that elder adults are more likely to commit suicide than the younger people although the reasoning makes sense. At the end of life cycle, it seems to be extremely hard to experience loss of spouse and other close relatives. Pain and depression are symptoms this learner would not want to face alone.
ReplyDeleteThe pain from many factors increases substance abuse among the elder population. I agree that misusing the elderly person’s money or property is called financial/material abuse and this learner feels that this happens more than people like to know.
It is also disturbing that a person would prey on an elderly person to scam them in giving money to make more money. Waiting for the elderly to be alone in the day than approaching them to earn their trust and persuade them to hand over money is absurd.
Elizabeth, I agree that the suicide rate for older adults is 50 percent higher than the rest of the population. There are many reasons that older people are more likely to commit suicide including the major ones like you said, depression, loss of loved ones, and social isolation. All of these are reasons that older people commit suicide and these can be brought on by stress which can worsen the situation. Older generations are also victims of fraud like you mentioned in the post that swindlers “use persuasion and emotional influence” to cheat older individual out of their money (p. 331). This is very unfortunate that the elderly are abused in this way, however they are more likely to be aware of fraudulent situations and if they are victimized by fraud they will most likely report the crime. Although older people are victims of crimes, they can also be the one committing the crime.
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