Situações de violência contra idosos em um município do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

In a society that grows old we can note an antinomy: in the same time that is encouraged the life extension, there is a small value for the human being that is getting aging. In the social space, we can observe recurrent situations of mistreatment to elderly people. Our understanding of an elderly person is that it has weakness to defend itself and when experiment a violence situation sometimes gets speechless being afraid of being abandoned for the family to not damage the offender or maybe with fear to be referred for a long-term care institution for the elderly. This study has the objectives: Identify the violence cases against elderly that were attended by the Secretary of Social Assistance team of Independência town localized in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, into the period of 2011 to 2015; Analyzing the understand of violence against elderly at home by the its residents how about: the members of senior citizens group, community health agents and traders. It is a quali-quantitative research and descriptive. We have identified as substantial results 48 registers of violence in Independencies/RS town and analyzed the meaning of a sample with 10 residents with ages between 23 and 71. The understanding was diverse and complementary according they own experience with violence cases against elderly. But in a general way revealed the presence of mistreatment and aggressions to elderly people in all interviews. Even though not contemplate all variable to understand why the violence situation happens it is possible to do some recommendations and general comments meaning that professionals has a relevant and necessary capacity of intervention in the family environment to change the behavior pattern over the experienced situation as well rendering care in a preventive manner with a empowerment for who will work with elderly.