What is Caregiver Abuse?

What is the appropriate response? How can we spread the message of Hope to this population?

Caregivers help persons with disabilities with activities of daily living, including bathing, managing medications, and taking care of meals, bills, household chores, and more. Caregivers can be unpaid family members, or they can be paid professionals. Caregivers can provide care for people living independently or with their families, or they can provide care for those living in long-term care facilities.

Because there is an inherent power dynamic between caregivers and the people they serve, it is critically important for caregivers to respect and clarify boundaries. When a caregiver crosses boundaries and uses power and control tactics, it is a form of abuse known as caregiver abuse. Even when the caregiver is an intimate partner, such as a spouse, the violation of boundaries is never okay.

What Does Caregiver Abuse Look Like?

Like other forms of abuse, Caregiver Abuse is rooted in power and control and can manifest in a variety of ways. While these are tactics that exist in other kinds of abusive relationships, caregiver abuse is unique because of the level of influence the caregiver has over their victim. Abusive caregivers may try to justify or hide their behavior in a number of ways.

They might try to justify being abusive by discussing the stress of the caregiver position - for example, being a caregiver is so stressful that they can’t help but lash out. When working with people who have mental health or cognitive disabilities, caregivers may try to gaslight their victims (convince them that their version of reality is false) by saying they imagined or hallucinated the abuse. Caregivers might also tell their victims that their feelings are not valid because of their disability. It is important to remember that abuse is never justifiable for any reason.

Caregiver Abuse and Elder Abuse often intersect. To learn more about the prevalence of abuse in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, read our next post on Elder Abuse. Because Everyone's Journey IS Different!

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