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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The dark side of family communication
— a communication model of elder abuse and neglect | | Author(s) | Mei-Chen Lin, Howard Giles |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 25, no 8, August 2013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, August 2013 |
| Pages | pp 1275-1290 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/ipg |
| Keywords | Elder abuse ; Neglect [care] ; Family relationships ; Communication ; Stress ; Theory. |
| Annotation | To further address the potential factors that lead up to abuse of older people in domestic settings, this paper proposes a model from a communication approach to explain dyadic influences between the family caregiver and the older care receiver that give rise to the abuse. That is, dysfunctional communication between the caregivers and care receivers may increase the likelihood of abuse. Grounded in Bugental and her colleagues' work (1993, 1999, 2002) on child abuse, the authors propose a power-oriented communication model based, in part, on research in the fields of family violence and intergenerational communication to explain the likelihood of occurrence of elder abuse in family caregiving situations. It is argued that certain risk factors pertaining to caregivers' characteristics _ those who perceive high stress in caregiving, have mental health issues, have a history of substance abuse and/or display verbal aggressiveness _ may be more likely to attribute considerable power to those older people under their custodianship. At the same time such caregivers tend to feel powerless and experience loss of control when interacting with their older counterparts. When an older care receiver displays noncompliant behaviours, caregivers may be prone to employ abusive behaviours (in this model it refers to physical abuse, verbal abuse or communication neglect) to seek such compliance. Consequences of such abuse may result in lower self-esteem or lower confidence in one's ability to manage his/her life. It is suggested that researchers and practitioners investigate both parties' interactions closely and the role of older care receivers in order to detect, intervene and prevent abuse. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130719210 A |
| Classmark | QNT: QNR: DS:SJ: U: QNH: 4D |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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