Much of the focus on nursing home abuse centers on physical and sexual abuse. However, emotional abuse poses just as much of a problem as physical abuse but can be more difficult to detect. Emotional or psychological abuse can have a devastating impact on the health of the nursing home resident who becomes the target of abuse.
Unfortunately, emotional abuse often goes unnoticed, even when the victim begins to display outward signs of distress or social withdrawal. With enough time, emotional abuse such as taunting, intimidation, humiliation, or threats of physical violence can cause psychological harm to a victim.
If your family has a loved one who you suspect has been victimized by emotional abuse or any type of abuse in a nursing home, turn to Joye Law Firm for assistance. For more than 50 years, our attorneys have been fighting to protect the rights of clients throughout South Carolina. We stand up for people who have been injured by the negligent, reckless, or deliberate actions of others. We seek to hold wrongdoers accountable and pursue justice and financial compensation on behalf of those who have been harmed.
Our South Carolina nursing home abuse attorneys have the experience and commitment to investigate difficult nursing home abuse cases. Our attorneys have been repeatedly recognized for their legal knowledge and excellence in providing legal representation to clients. While we can never guarantee a specific outcome in a case, we take pride in our track record of successful results obtained on behalf of our clients.
Call us at (877) 941-1019 or contact us online for a free case evaluation. We’ll discuss your rights and options. Our goal is to help you protect your loved one and hold the nursing home and other responsible parties accountable for the emotional abuse your loved one has suffered.
Non-Physical Abuse Is Still Abuse
When nursing home abuse is discussed, most people think about physical abuse, such as punching, pushing, hitting, or kicking. People may not immediately think about emotional abuse as a type of injury that occurs in nursing homes. Some may even think of emotional abuse as a less serious form of abuse since being taunted, yelled at, humiliated, or belittled does not cause the same kind of injury that physical or sexual assault can.
However, the emotional abuse of a nursing home resident is still abuse. Emotional abuse can have just as devastating an impact on an abuse victim’s life as physical abuse. The harm to an elderly person’s mental health caused by emotional abuse can lead to physical effects as well.
Because the signs of emotional abuse are less visible than scars, bruises, and other injuries caused by physical abuse, emotional abuse often goes undetected even by family members and loved ones.
Understanding Emotional Abuse in Nursing Homes
Nursing home residents depend on nursing home staff to help with basic needs such as eating, bathing, taking medications, getting dressed, and attending activities. We entrust nursing home staff to provide attentive and respectful care to our loved ones. Emotional abuse involves any behavior from a nursing home staffer or caregiver that results in a resident feeling humiliated, threatened, isolated, and/or controlled and experiencing anguish, mental distress, or fear.
Staffers or caregivers may engage in emotional abuse of a nursing home resident for various reasons, such as to punish a nursing home resident for perceived difficulties in their care.
Emotional abuse might be committed by only one staff member or by several staffers at a nursing home facility. This may represent a pervasive problem throughout an entire nursing home staff. A nursing home may be understaffed, putting stress on nursing home workers who take out their frustrations on elderly residents by taunting them or verbally abusing them.
Likewise, nursing home residents could be targets of abuse by other residents. It is the nursing home’s responsibility to do everything possible to identify, correct, and prevent future harm.
Examples of Emotional Abuse
Examples of conduct that can constitute emotional abuse of a resident include:
- Insults and name-calling
- Humiliating, shaming, or belittling
- Treating a resident like a child
- Yelling or cursing
- Talking about a resident in a demeaning way to others
- Embarrassing a resident in front of others
- Ignoring a resident or giving them the cold shoulder
- Withholding access to the telephone or other communication devices
- Isolating a resident from family and friends
- Refusing to allow a resident to participate in social activities
- Refusing or ignoring requests for assistance
- Restricting food, water, and medication
- Taking away canes, walkers, glasses, or other property
- Threatening physical or sexual abuse
The emotional abuse of an elderly person in a nursing home can prove difficult to identify. Emotional abuse may take the form of trying to isolate the abuse victim from friends and family, making it difficult for loved ones to spot the issue. Many of the symptoms and warning signs of emotional abuse aren’t physical or visible in nature. Signs that can be seen often are attributed to other conditions, such as dementia.
