When Nursing Home Abuse is Discovered

22 May When Nursing Home Abuse is Discovered

Nursing home abuse can go on for quite a while before it is discovered in some cases, unfortunately. In a lot of cases, nursing home mistreatment is not visited upon every patient at the nursing home. In fact, there are quite a few cases where one or two patients are singled out by staff members and abused mercilessly and continuously. If your loved one is in a nursing home facility where abuse was discovered, you'll want to take the following measures, among others, to find out what happened.

1: Exam

Depending upon the mental clarity of your loved one, it may be difficult for them to communicate what happened to them. In fact, some elderly people will not even remember being abused if they suffer from conditions such as Alzheimer's or dementia. Having a physician examine your loved one to make certain that there are no signs of abuse is the most reliable way to determine if anything was going on physically. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to prove whether there was mental abuse if the patient involved happens to be significantly mentally impaired due to illnesses or very advanced age.

2: Counseling

If your loved one is still clear of mind, you may want to arrange for counseling for them. It's a good idea to at least have them talk to somebody other than law enforcement, attorneys or other professionals who have other reasons for investigating the abuse than offering treatment to the victims. Having a counselor talk to your loved one may help them to open up about the situation they were in and, if they don't, the counselor still may be able to determine whether or not they are at risk of depression or any other mental issues because of the abuse.

3: Moving

Obviously, you may want to consider moving your loved one to a different nursing home. Even if they were not victims of abuse at that nursing home, it's still hard to trust a facility that allowed one of your loved ones to come to harm.

Nursing home abuse lawyers can represent you if your loved one was abused or the victim of other types of nursing home negligence. Contacting a lawyer soon is imperative. There are limitations on how long you have to act after the abuse is discovered and, because of that, you should at least contact an attorney to determine how much time you have remaining to decide about filing a lawsuit.