Seniors face bullying at residential facilities
It’s a nasty scene straight out of a high school cafeteria — but you could find it in just about any Saskatoon seniors’ housing facility.
“In residences where there is a communal dining room, (they say) ‘You can’t sit at my table.’ People, they get into little cliques and then, particularly a new person coming in, they can’t sit at that table, they can’t sit with them in that lounge,” said Candace Skrapek, the Agefriendly Development Committee chair for the Saskatoon Council on Aging.
“There were a couple of places where people would sit at the door as people were coming in from outside and make comments about people as they were coming in — ‘You’re too fat, you’re not dressed very well, your hair is a mess’ — unkind comments that hurt people’s feelings.”
The stories are surprising and go against the stereotype of seniors being kind and gentle, Skrapek said. When the council came across them as it worked on its Age Friendly Saskatoon Initiative, it turned to Donna Goodridge, who was already helping with that work, to study the phenomenon further.
From January through May last year, she surveyed 251 tenants in one facility. Thirty-nine per cent of the 49 respondents said they had witnessed bullying, and 30 per cent said they had been bullied themselves.
Seniors in multi-unit residential facilities come from all walks of life and often lack common ground, Goodridge said. They face stress and loss as they get older, and they don’t all deal with that in the same way. Seniors also don’t have the same social supports as children or other adults. This can all come out as disrespectful behaviour.
“I think we need to step back and look at communication. What does it mean to have a really respectful environment, a respectful community? Because that’s really what it is, this is a community in microcosm,” Skrapek said.
Two other factors are important. Seniors in such facilities don’t have the same control over their lives as they used to, and often have chronic conditions, from pain to dementia, that can affect behaviour.
Bullied seniors show symptoms that are similar to those found in bullied children — sleeplessness, anxiety and increased stress. They can become isolated, which then leads to other health problems, such as depression, Skrapek said.
To break that cycle, the SCOA is developing tool kits staff and residents can use to deal with bullying. They include a presentation and role-playing activities to help residents and staff find the words to tell people their behaviour is unwanted.
“It is very similar, in many ways, to how kids are helped to deal with bullying in school or in their personal friendships.”