Elderly Abuse

Before doing research on this topic, I would have said that the United States treats the elderly with passion and love, but I now know that I was wrong. The elderly people have been treated just as badly, if not worse then, in Japan. How could this be? The elderly are so innocent, loving, and have nothing but care for most people. How could anyone harm such a loving soul? These questions are more than likely going through many minds as I am writing this paper. In the United States most of the abuse has came from nursing homes, but in Japan more than likely the abuse is coming from the offspring of the elderly. Even though both governments' officials are trying to pass new laws to protect the elderly, the abuse continues. There are groups that are forming up to help support the elderly in the United States. The people of Japan are not doing as much as they should because the abuse happens behind closed doors and the family member will more than likely just deny it.

Crimes that are committed against the elderly can be divided into two different categories. "The first crime includes conventional crimes such as robbery, theft, fraud, rape, and homicide. The second type of crime is more about the neglect and abuse" (James). These crimes happen more often with older people than they do with younger people because the elderly a lot of times have some type of disease that will prevent them from doing a lot of things and they are sometimes motionless. Therefore they cannot do anything about the robberies or the abuse. It would take a person with a very cold heart to be able to inflict so much pain on an innocent person. Why can't the world just show love and happiness to its older generation?

The difference between the United States and Japan is that the children of the elderly are abusing them in Japan and in the United States nursing homes are abusing our elderly. "Of nursing home staff in 1989 40% admitted to committing at least one psychologically abusive act toward a resident and 10% admitted to physically abusing a resident in the preceding year" (Fischer). These people working in nursing homes are supposed to be taking care of our loved ones, but instead of taking care of our family members they are hurting them. According to Christie Fischer, a student studying elderly abuse at the University of South Dakota, the United States spent 77.9 billion dollars in 1995 for nursing home care alone. How could an industry that is being paid so much inflict so much pain on someone? "Abuse in nursing homes can take place in many shapes and forms including, but not limited to, verbal, physical, psychological, and abuse due to the use of restraints" (Fischer). These statements are not saying that every nursing home in the United States does not take care of its patients but it is saying that some of this truly does happen in the nursing homes throughout the United States. In Japan, on the other hand, most of the abuse comes from the children of the elderly. "In one case, a public servant quit his job to care for his mother in her 80s and adapted his home to meet her needs, including the installation of a lift. But without support from other family members, the strain took its toll on the man, who began abusing his mother, giving her water only once a day. The abuse on the mother only got worse when her son died, leaving the care to her daughter-in-law, who refused to let the woman take a bath, and escalated the abuse when the woman became too weak to walk. Then the daughter-in-law refused to feed the woman because she said it would help the mother pass on to her next life quicker" (Green).

"The abuse has gone so far that the sons were responsible for the abuse in 32 percent of the cases, followed by daughters-in-law and spouses, each at 20 percent. About 64 percent of the cases involved mental abuse, including yelling or willful neglect, 52 percent involved denying meals or other forms of care and 50 percent included beating people or tying them to their bed" (Ajima). According to the Xinhua News Agency, 54.1 percent of the alleged abusers did not recognize they were abusing their victim, compared with 24.7 percent who did. The elderly refuse to tell on their children because they are their loved ones and they feel as if they have done something wrong while raising them. Also, "elderly victims refuse to flee out of fear that their offspring might steal their possessions" (Ajima). For someone who has gave you everything that you have ever had, some of the people in the world want to take and treat them like animals. Many people need to sit back and look deep into these situations and take control of them. Other countries need to put a stop to this as well. "The reason why the people of Japan are not doing a lot to stop this is because problems inside the home have traditionally been regarded as a family matter" (Ajima). "In 90 percent of most cases care managers say that it is difficult to find out and help the elderly because their families always put in the efforts to intervene" (Roundup).

The government officials are not doing much about the abuse in Japan; The only thing that Japan has really started to do is set up private facilities that the elderly can call and get help from and they are also hiring top notch lawyers to support the elderly