Should We Do More to Protect Our Elders From Abuse?

Elder manipulation and abuse for financial gain is a despicable act against the nature of communal living and disrespectful to the lives of individuals. The act is immoral and so is turning a blind eye to such behaviors for social, racial, religious or ideological reasons with an intent to protect the "in group". Let us explore an example of elder abuse and in what situations where it may not be seen as immoral or worthy of correction. 

First look at some statistics on elder abuse and what people will do to even to their own family members. According to a USC Study on Family Abuse of abuse family engage in....

Nearly 62% of financial abuse cases
35% of emotional abuse cases
20% of elder neglect cases
12% of physical abuse cases
0.3% of sexual abuse cases

While these are some scary statistics we find that in some places such stats don't seem to have any bearing on moral conclusions. Closed systems occur where people who know each other allow these things to happen because of social homogeneous affiliations and its related pressures. In such situations, the elderly do not have much protection and there are few recourses to help them. 

 

Because such statistics seem dismal when it comes to family it should be known that greater protections would help in curbing these behaviors. Even more true if people are aware and based on these social affiliations did not report the perpetrators. 

While I do not have the resolution to such issues I can say that when it happens its is important to investigate and ensure that it hasn't happened and won't happen again. Sometimes there is a history of this in the past but signs were ignored for convenience reasons. 

I'm a supporter in enhancing any system to improve so as to best serve the needs of all people.