A nursing home abuse attorney can help if a loved one has experienced emotional neglect in a long-term care facility. An overlooked form of abuse, it’s often not as obvious as physical abuse or a lack of basic care. However, emotional neglect can significantly impact a person’s behavior, well-being, and quality of life. Failing to meet a resident’s physical or emotional needs is a breach of duty. If your loved one has been affected, an experienced attorney can help file and win a nursing home abuse case.
What Is Emotional and Mental Abuse In a Nursing Home?
Psychological trauma can be harmful to anyone. It’s especially problematic for individuals with physical, cognitive, and memory impairments. However, far too many nursing home residents become victims of the controlling or manipulative behavior of staff members. Emotional abuse takes many forms but can make a person feel fearful, shameful, or depressed. It can manifest as:
- Threats and Intimidation: A staff member may threaten a resident with physical harm or punishment due to unwanted behavior or their physical or mental limitations.
- Verbal Abuse: Screaming at, humiliating, or ridiculing a resident can invoke shame, fear, and anxiety that can exacerbate their situation. Yelling is often used as a means to control or manipulate a person.
- Isolation: Using the “silent treatment” or otherwise willfully ignoring a resident, isolating them from friends and family, or denying them activities or necessary goods or services is abusive.
- Manipulation: To gain an advantage, a staffer may use manipulation to invoke distress in a resident or exploit their dependency.
- Blame: A staff member blames the resident for their problems, issues related to a given situation, or circumstances beyond their control.
- Limiting Access: Purposefully restricting access to food, water, medication, and other necessities exploits a person’s vulnerability. Taking away canes, walkers, glasses, or hearing aids is also abuse.
- Violating Privacy: Spying on or acting in a way that violates a person’s privacy can cause emotional and psychological harm.
Warning Signs of Emotional Abuse
Caretakers in a nursing home are unlikely to exhibit abusive tendencies while family members are visiting. However, you can’t always be there, so you don’t know what’s going on all the time. And, it’s unlikely abusive behaviors will be documented. Therefore, it’s important to communicate openly and often with a loved one to see how they’re doing.
The signs of nursing home emotional abuse are often subtle. Nonetheless, some of the warning signs to raise suspicion and consider consulting a nursing home abuse attorney include the following:
- Changes in mood and demeanor
- Unusual behavior around a caretaker
- Erratic behaviors
- Expression of self-doubt
- Avoiding eye contact
- Unexplained agitation
- Confusion
- Difficulty sleeping
- Isolation or refusal to interact with others
- Increased nervousness
- Changes in appearance or weight
- Loss of appetite
Emotional neglect can also lead to other issues. For example, letting a resident lie in bed or sit in a wheelchair for too long can cause or worsen mobility problems. Serious bedsores can also occur. You may also notice changes in hygiene, especially if a loved one needs help with personal care and isn’t getting it.
Signs of dehydration and malnutrition can mean they’re being denied food or water. Tiredness, irritability, weight loss, thinning skin, hair loss, and complaints of being cold should prompt you to look into the situation. In some cases, unsanitary conditions, bruises, and injuries can mean emotional neglect tactics are putting your loved one in danger.
Reasons Why Nursing Home Neglect Happens
Nursing home abuse attorneys often see similar patterns in emotional neglect cases. Some of the most common contributors include:
- Understaffing: Nursing homes often have too few staff members to provide every resident with the care and attention they need. High turnover rates also contribute to a lack of care and put residents at risk of neglect.
- Negligent Hiring: Some facility managers hire unqualified and untrained staff to cut costs. Mistakes and neglect are more likely to occur when caretakers aren’t suited for the job.
- Poor Management: A lack of supervision and accountability is a far-reaching problem. With inadequate management, staff members aren’t held accountable for neglect. The problem can be managed with effective oversight and promptly addressing any issues.
- Inadequate Policies and Procedures: All policies should be enforced and procedures followed to ensure all residents receive consistent and proper care. Otherwise, a nursing home will struggle to maintain a high standard of care.
- Lack of Resources: A shortage of supplies, inadequate facilities, and financial constraints can also lower a nursing home’s standard of care. Limited financial resources and poor financial management often lead to understaffing, limited supplies, and poor maintenance.
How to Report Nursing Home Neglect
Nursing home neglect is an underreported problem. Therefore, a loved one’s complaints should be taken seriously and any concerns investigated. A nursing home’s reputation and how well-staffed and maintained it is should be evaluated before placing a loved one there. For example, speaking to other residents and their families helps determine if the facility is well-run.
It’s important to report suspected neglect as soon as you can. The statute of limitations in California is usually two years. If you don’t file a lawsuit within that time, from the date an incident of neglect or abuse occurred or when you discovered it, you may lose the legal right to sue.
Emotional neglect often coincides with other forms of abuse. Therefore, it can lead to depression and other psychological issues, injuries, disability, or wrongful death. If you suspect a loved one is being abused emotionally at a nursing home, you can report it to:
- Local Law Enforcement: If you feel someone is in immediate danger, call 911. Or, you can have the police or paramedics take the person to a safe location. They can also investigate whether the facility has broken any laws.
- Adult Protective Services (APS): In California, every county has an APS office. It investigates any non-urgent complaint by performing a welfare check. Depending on how the resident in question is doing, it can recommend how to proceed.
- Social Worker: Social workers are often partnered with APS and called on to investigate complaints. They can provide you with advice and assistance to help address health and safety concerns.
- Long-Term Care Ombudsman: A local long-term care ombudsman advocates for adults in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. They know the signs of neglect to investigate. If necessary, they can also help take legal action.
- Nursing Home Abuse Attorney: Emotional neglect can have financial impacts. An attorney can hold a nursing home accountable and pursue compensation. The funds awarded can be used to cover associated medical bills and move a loved one to a safer, better-equipped facility.
Legal Remedies for Nursing Home Emotional Abuse
When a family member is humiliated, isolated, or traumatized at a nursing home, you have the right to pursue legal action. A skilled attorney can help file a lawsuit. To build the case, they can allege the facility, through intentional and/or negligent acts of its employees, caused a resident harm.
Intentional and persistent abuse ignored by other staff or managers can lead to being awarded punitive damages, but the most common types of compensation recovered are for the cost of:
- Medical care
- Physical or psychological therapy
- Reduced quality of life
- Emotional distress
- Pain and suffering
A nursing home abuse attorney can also pursue compensation to move a resident to another nursing home. They can pursue related damages as well, including costs to treat injuries that result from neglect or the depression, anxiety, and embarrassment a loved one may have experienced. Whether a staff member, nurse, on-site doctor, management, or the facility itself is to blame, your lawyer will determine who’s legally responsible and hold them accountable.
Other Types of Nursing Home Abuse to Watch Out For
As stated earlier, emotional neglect often stems from or occurs alongside other issues. Therefore, it’s essential to know all the indications of abuse or neglect, which include:
- Physical Abuse: Cuts, bruises, and burns can mean an elder is being physically abused. They can be signs of being pushed, shoved, punched, or kicked. Ignoring calls for help or a medical condition can also have physical implications.
- Medical Neglect: Denying a patient access to medical treatment, medication, care, or a device is considered a dangerous form of neglect. Medical neglect also includes administering the wrong medication or misusing medications on purpose, such as to sedate a resident.
- Sexual Abuse: Ranging from harassment to non-consensual contact, this can have far-reaching physical and emotional effects as well as medical issues such as infections. Nursing home staff, other residents, or visitors can be to blame.
- Financial Abuse: A resident’s funds, property, or assets may be used in a way that doesn’t benefit their long-term care. Financial abuse can take the form of forging their signature, stealing money, manipulating them into signing documents, using their credit cards, scaring them into transferring assets, or identity theft.
- Abandonment: Not checking on patients regularly, ignoring their calls, not helping them with necessary tasks, failing to administer medication, or delaying attending to their needs are types of abandonment.
The more evidence of abuse and neglect you can gather, the stronger your case.
Contact Our Los Angeles Nursing Home Abuse Attorney
Emotional abuse in nursing homes puts residents’ health and well-being at risk. In caregiving, it is a form of negligence. The attorneys at The Law Offices of Jacob Emrani specialize in all types of nursing home abuse cases.
If a loved one has been victimized, we can help determine who is responsible, starting with recognizing the signs of neglect and abuse. Our team then works hard to build your case. They provide legal advice and representation until we win the compensation you deserve.
Has a family member suffered emotional neglect at a long-term care facility? Call Jacob at (888) 952-2952 to speak to a nursing home abuse attorney.