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What Should Be Known About Nursing Home Abuse?
Nursing home abuse is something that can happen to people that are under care from a licensed caring facility. Many different abuse types exist and it is really important to realize the fact that this is actually possible. Those abuse types that are more common than others are sexual, physical, financial and emotional. Abuse, according to a reputable nursing home abuse attorney Springfield IL, often takes place in plain sight and is overlooked. The person at fault can be another resident or facility care staff.
The Elder Abuse Problem
Elderly mistreatment is defined as practically engaging in actions that would intentionally create risk for a person’s health or harm by a caregiver or an individual that is trusted. It is not known how many seniors are right now neglected or abused. Even so, the problem is normally worse when looking at women that are aged over 65 years old.
Basically, one thing that should be known is that when the person is older, there is a much higher possibility that abuse will appear.
Unfortunately, elderly abuse evidence is so often overlooked. This is even the case with healthcare professionals and it happens because of the very little training that is available in regards to nursing home abuse. Also, the elder is often reluctant to file a report when abuse appeared due to the natural fear of retribution or the fact that they might not receive continued care from the nursing facility.
It is also possible that the elderly person being abused cannot talk about the abuse since there are communication or language problems. 90% of the caught abusers come from the family so senior citizens fail to file a report in an attempt to not get a loved person in trouble.
Some Important Statistics
The APS (Adult Protective Services) state that there are now many more reported elder abuse cases than ever in the past. Also:
- 4 to 10 percent of elderly people experienced abuse in the past year. This statistic does not consider financial abuse.
- Numerous exploitation, abuse and neglect cases are not reported. Even if the APS is present in every single US state and there are reporting laws that are mandatory, unreported cases are believed to be more numerous than the reported ones.
- Around 41 out of 1000 people older than 65 experienced some sort of financial exploitation. This is more than those suffering from physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse or neglect.
Unfortunately, around 90% of the abusers are family members in the case of elderly citizens. The rest is made out of caregivers, spouses and partners. Caretakers and family members that abuse drugs and alcohol daily, or that have mental or emotional illnesses, are usually at a higher risk of becoming an abuser.
Many think that in nursing facilities the situation is better but it is not. Over 3 million US citizens now live in a nursing home and can be neglected or abused. Around 44% of them are actually recognizing that some sort of abuse happened.
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