Many seniors suffer from psychological abuse, which is a common form of emotional abuse in nursing homes and community homes. Psychological abuse is sometimes non-verbal or verbal and can consist of actions that would cause seniors anguish or emotional or mental harm.
Sometimes, it could range from harassment, intimidation, coercive behavior, insulting, bullying, and others. Other times, even isolating them from their families, friends, and activities or treating them like children could constitute psychological abuse.
Psychological abuse can be inflicted by nursing home staff in nursing homes. However, other persons or residents can also inflict psychological abuse. Therefore, it is proper to prevent psychological abuse in seniors because it could be dangerous, lead to emotional concerns, and add to their physical health decline.
When physical abuse persists in a senior, they might start exhibiting various indicators of psychological abuse. This should be an indicator that something is wrong. Physiological abuse causes seniors to become depressed, withdrawn, and timider.
To protect seniors from psychological abuse in nursing homes, you would need to perform various actions, which include:
Learn about elderly abuse indicators
You can protect your seniors from psychological abuse by learning what constitutes elderly abuse in nursing homes or community homes. If you are not sure of your facts, you can seek a nursing home abuse lawyer advice. Doing this ensures that you keep abreast of things you need to know.
Some indicators of senior psychological abuse in nursing homes include; the refusal of seniors to speak or interact with others, withdrawal or depression, sudden changes in behavior or personality, anxiety, agitation, fearfulness.
Others could include; nervousness or excessive fear or unwillingness to talk around staff, confusion, passive behavior or resignation, unusual behaviors like rocking, biting, or sucking, paranoia, and closed body language or self hugging.
Regularly visit your senior
To prevent your senior from psychological abuse, it is paramount that you regularly visit the nursing homes where your senior is being kept. During such visits, you can interview the staff based on your findings and then draw your conclusion.
Performing regular visitation prevents abuse situations. When you place your senior into a nursing home, as a family member, you should regularly speak with your senior to ensure that every behavior change is noted.
Also, apart from visiting your seniors in the same nursing home, you can see other areas of the nursing home where residents are being cared for. This would allow you to likely spot cases of abuse by staff members that engage in elderly abuse.
Keep track of behavior changes around staff
Sometimes, when you visit your seniors in a nursing home, you might notice some changes in behavior when they are around a specific staff. You might assume that such changes are expected age-related declines. However, it could not be the case.
Such cases should be noted. Typical examples are a withdrawn attitude or unwillingness to talk when your elder ones are close to specific staff.
You should keep track of such scenarios and report to the nursing home. If it persists, you can call an attorney well versed in nursing home abuse cases. You can even directly report to your local authority.
Pay attention to staff when you visit
To protect your loved ones in a nursing home, you should pay attention to the staff when you visit. This should be done especially when they are with other patients in the nursing home and not watching.
Abusive staff members might engage in abuse when they believe they are not being observed. Though, there might be some cover-ups. However, you could find some abusive behavior details that you can report.
Nursing home psychological screening
Taking care of the elderly in a nursing home can be unnerving, and some staff might succumb to work pressure. To protect your loved ones from such nursing home abuse, ensure that the nursing home where they are placed conducts regular checks on its staff.
Such checks that you should look out for include how the nursing homes deal with anger management issues in staff, stress, and other burdens, how well regular breaks are given to its caregivers, and how the facility deals with depression among its caregivers.
Report abuse cases
Sometimes, the best way to protect your loved ones in nursing homes is to take immediate action by reporting such abuse cases to the appropriate authorities. This would protect the well-being of your loved one.
Final Words
When you see physiological abuse occurring to your loved ones, you should take various preventive measures to protect your loved ones. Kindly take any of the advice given in this post and you can be sure of protection for seniors in nursing homes.