Kansas City Elder Emotional Abuse Attorneys

What is Emotional Abuse in a Nursing Home?

Emotional abuse is a specific type of elder abuse that involves harming or manipulating the emotions of an elderly nursing home resident. Typically, emotional abuse is carried out by nursing home staff members like caretakers or orderlies, but members of management, administrators, vendors, and visiting family members can also cause emotional abuse.

Emotional abuse can take many forms but often involves:

• Intentionally rousing to anger
• Belittling or humiliating
• Invalidating emotions
• Prohibiting emotional responses to situations

It is important to recognize that emotional abuse can be just as harmful – or even more harmful – than physical abuse, especially the longer it goes on. Elderly people who have been emotionally abused may fall into depression or succumb to severe anxiety as they start to doubt themselves or pull away from friends and family. As day-to-day well-being declines from emotional abuse, the need for legal intervention increases.

What is Verbal Abuse in a Nursing Home?

Verbal abuse occurs when verbal or spoken words are used to emotionally abuse or manipulate a senior in a nursing home. Perhaps ironically, verbal abuse can also occur as written words, such as handing a nursing home resident menacing notes or letters. As with emotional abuse, the purpose of verbal abuse is to intentionally harm or coerce an elderly person, usually someone who has little communication with family who could intervene.

Verbal abuse might include:

• Shouting or yelling
• Threatening
• Humiliating or shaming
• Mocking a resident’s disabilities
• Insulting
• Ridiculing

What is Mental Abuse in a Nursing Home?

Similar to emotional abuse in that it doesn’t involve physical violence, mental abuse attempts to harm or worsen an elderly resident’s mental health or mental state of mind. Rather than targeting or manipulating emotions, a mental abuser tries to change the elderly resident’s perception or thought processes. Usually, mental abuse aims to confuse or mislead the resident to the point that they feel like they need to rely on the abuser for information and decisions, as well as how they should react to situations.

Mental abuse in a nursing home might include:

• Gaslighting
• Causing social isolation
• Lying or intentionally manipulating
• Inciting confusion or fear