Elderly People In Malaysia - Our Responsibility

Either we like or not , we  are currently being exposed to campaigns which develop awereness and preventing child abuses. Actually the potential for cruelty behaviour is exists in evey human soul but it depends on how they  can contol themself. Actually, public awareness in child abuse in our society is more popular rather than elder abuse. Why?

What is elder abuse?

The simple defination is cereless act that harm or serious risk of harm to an older person. There are several categorise of elder abuse such as:-

1. Emotional abuse
2. Physical abuse
3. Neglected especially in caregiverr's failure.
4. Abandoned
5. Exploitation

In Malaysia, the majority of elderly people are women. But in future this may not be so because  for the time being, some women are now adopting some of the men's lifestyles such smoking, drinking, high risk job, drug addict and etc that  can  lead to an ealier death. However, no matter men or women, elder abuse is increasing from time to time without proper action from the government or society. Elder abuse is increasing but it is hardly reported. This problem often undetected because of lack of public awareness and lack of knowledge among our society regarding to elder abuse.
Who actually are the abusers. It is very hard to believe who's the actual abusers. Normally, the majority of abusers are family members. Abuse can also occure in nursing home or welfare home such as Old Folk Home, Day Care Center or Center for The Aged. Elder abuse can happen to anyone. Normally elder victims are never responsible for their abuse, perpetrators are responsible. There are some factors that may increase an elder's vulnerability include:
- Social isolation
- Mental desease
- Personal Problem of abuser
- Alcohol or drug dependence
- Environment andi living condition
- Finance problem

No one knows exactly hom many victims of elder abuse. There are no official report about elder abuse in Malaysia. This is may be   lack of awareness about elder abuse.In Malaysia, there are no specific law  that covered the older people when they are abused. Caring for the aged is a  family responsibilities in our society.So it's very hard to make sure that who is actually the abuser within our society.

Like death, old age is treated fear and hatred in modern society. Physical abuse or neglect may be obvious in our country but psychological and emotional abuse can often go unnoticed to an ordinary observer. In addtion there is a very harnful and destructive form of abuse to which modern society actually contributes in its obsession with cost effectiveness.

In designing programmes to care for the elderly people, social policy for the elderly needs to be planned wisely as far as possible so that elderly people can have command over the resources needed for improvement in their quality of life. The study of social support for elderly people in Malaysia is important especially when we want to determine the effectiveness of social policy for them. For the time being, we only have general social policy for the aged without special measurement for the aged.