Nursing Homes Transitioning into Violent Places

Pressbox (Press Release) - At one time nursing homes were thought to be places where seniors in need of care they could not provide themselves went to live. These days the demographics of nursing homes have changed, and not for the better.

There was a time when someone went to a nursing home to visit a loved one; all they encountered in the home were elderly patients needing care and supervision. “Those demographics have been drastically changing, bringing in an element of potential violence. Nowadays even younger residents are being placed in nursing homes; patients with manic depression, schizophrenia and other forms of depression. Missing the elderly and infirm with the younger and unstable is not a recipe for success,” said Michael G. Smith, a Little Rock injury lawyer and Little Rock accident lawyer, practicing personal injury law in Little Rock Arkansas.

Last year alone, there were over 125,000 mentally ill younger patients and middle-aged residents residing in nursing home in the US. “In the six years since these kinds of statistics were last checked, the number of mentally ill being housed with seniors went from 89,000 to over 125,000. Those figures raise some very real concerns about conditions in nursing homes today,” added Smith.

Just why are psychiatric patients being homed with infirm seniors in nursing homes? Look to the economy for the answer to that pointed question. Very simply, there are not enough beds to handle that kind of psychiatric load, and hundreds of state mental institutions have been shut down due to lack of funds. Nursing homes happen to have extra beds thanks to the fact that many of the older generation these days are in better health than they once were, and therefore opt to stay in their own home longer.

While there are no current statistics about the number of serious assaults or deaths as a result of mixing the mentally ill with seniors in a nursing home, these kinds of crimes are making themselves known. This is not a trend that anyone wishes to encourage, and wonders how they will handle it later. “This brings the concept of nursing home abuse/elder abuse into a whole new arena,” commented Michael G. Smith, a Little Rock injury lawyer and Little Rock accident lawyer, practicing personal injury law in Little Rock Arkansas.

Elder abuse is a very real problem in our society and if someone in a nursing home is faced with challenges such as the ones described here, their family needs to contact an experienced Little Rock personal injury lawyer to get to the bottom of the issue. The fact is that seniors living in a nursing home depend on others for the basics – shelter, medical needs and food. If those needs are not met, this can cause severe harm to the patients. Not having any of the necessities provided is elder abuse.