The phenomenon of elder abuse and ways of prevention and intervention

Abstract

In today’s world abuse committed against the elderly receives much less attention than against women and children. There are several aspects because it is very important for elder abuse to receive at least the same amount of publicity: respect of the elderly, teaching our children the correct standards, serving as prevention, that the phenomenon exists, and thus teaching the younger generation that one type of abuse is not accepted either. Our aim with this paper was to draw attention to the importance gerontological research on elder abuse. Therefore, after describing the types of abuse, we present international and national prevalence data. We look at how to get help in Hungary and the possible reasons why older adults do not seek help. Finally, by presenting the World Health Organization's criteria, our aim is to point the way to solving the problems raised in the study. We would like to present the topic from several aspects so it helps the people to recognize the typical signs of potential abuse. Abuses against the elderly can also happen at the institutional and family level. Nevertheless, it can also occur in public, because the elderly can be categorized as endangered as children and women, because they have similar characteristics like defencelessness, naivety and weaker physicality. Also, it should be mentioned, because as we will see later, based on the opinion of the World Health Organization (WHO), it also includes the lack of help and action and how much people act altruistic. The fact that the WHO (2022) urges the fight against abuse of the elderly in the next few years indicates the actuality of the theme. The purpose of the study is to highlight the importance of elder abuse in the professional public consciousness.