Bringing Hope to the Elderly

 

Dr. Carmel Dyer

For many, growing old means retirement and enjoying what you’ve worked for your whole life. But for some elderly people, that dream is far from reality. Theirs is a darker truth–one filled with abuse, not at the hands of others, but by their own self-neglect.

Sometimes seniors neglect their own care by refusing or failing to provide themselves with sufficient food, water, shelter or medication -- which can lead to serious illness or injury.

It’s unclear why or how the elderly get to this point. But Dr. Carmel Dyer, Director of the Geriatrics Program at Quentin Mease Community Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine with Baylor College of Medicine, hopes to gain a better understanding of the elderly and their neglect by partnering with patients and the public to improve our community’s health.

Dyer received a $1.7 million planning grant from the National Institutes of Health Roadmap Initiative (NIH) to focus on defining and discovering the causes of elder self-neglect. She will bring researchers from diverse disciplines to focus on the problem.

“Self-neglect is the most common form of elder mistreatment, yet we have no common definition for it and we do not know the cause,” Dyer said. “We do know that senior citizens who suffer from self-neglect die at more than double the rate of elders who do not neglect themselves.”

As principle investigator of the Consortium for Research in Elder Self-Neglect of Texas (CREST), Dyer will work with Texas Adult Protective Services, NASA, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the University of Houston.

Dyer and her colleagues hope to define self-neglect, describe characteristics of self-neglectors, and develop models to explain the physical, cognitive and socioeconomic factors.

In her years working with the elderly, she has seen extreme cases of self-neglect.

“We have seen cases where elderly live in squalor and filth; they become so weak they can’t get out of bed,” Dyer said. “Regardless of economic background or status, self-neglectors don’t have the facilities or faculties to take care of themselves or their homes.”

The group’s goal is to secure future NIH funding for a large center where researchers can conduct and establish interdisciplinary clinics to serve seniors in need.

To reach this goal, Dyer and colleagues will conduct pilot studies of 100 self-neglectors, researching their memory, mood and muscle strength, and comparing them to those who do not self-neglect.

“From these findings we hope to learn what is common among the seniors in need” Dyer said. “Is it depression, dementia or mental illness? That’s part of what we’ll look for in our research.”

Along with pilot studies, NIH will organize a national external advisory board. Made up of lawyers, a police officer, a researcher, geriatricians and social workers, the board will advise CREST and guide the research, making it applicable to the day-to-day needs of the elderly.