The Physical Injuries in Elder Abuse - Essay Example

"The Physical Injuries in Elder Abuse" is a wonderful example of a paper on social and family issues.
This article is based on a report, which is about physical injuries in elder abuse. A research was conducted in which the database of many websites was searched from the years 1975-2012. Many articles were studied to gain knowledge about the subject. 

Physical abuse in elders is a major problem in today’s growing world. Evidence shows that elders are often tortured at home and the care institutions. Abusing the elder is considered a serious criminal offense as they occupy a major part of the country’s population. The statistics show that in Canada there is an increase in such cases. In 2009 about 7900 cases were reported which is much more than previous years. Even though there is an increase in such cases but the reason for the increase in the reporting of these cases is not clear. This increase may be the result of the large number of awareness programs taking place in Canada and throughout the world.    

The data sources for this research were PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, and TRIP. The literature studied for research included the articles that contained words of the like of physical elder abuse, elder abuse, etc. However, there were only a few articles or case studies that were found relevant to this research. The data extracted were classified into different groups based on the type of injuries. 

The injury pattern found in the victims included skull and brain injuries, upper and lower extremity, maxillofacial and neck injuries, and torso. The Brazilians gave the largest contribution to this study (73 percent). The majority of injuries reported in these cases were mild and required treatment for its healing. Another study focused on the case of adult physical abuse showed deaths in adults which resulted from physical causing brain hemorrhage. In many cases, the victims of adult physical abuse were also sent to the intensive care unit and still couldn’t survive and succumbed to injuries.  

The result of this study showed that two-thirds of the injuries in adult abuse cases were in the upper extremity and maxillofacial region. Therefore, it is the need of today’s world to identify such injuries and to bring forward the evidence for the elder abuse to stop such criminal acts and save the lives of many (Kieran Murphy 10-14).