Violência contra a pessoa idosa no Brasil

Abstract

The elderly is susceptible to acts of violence as a result of generational conflicts, with different social, cultural and economic values. This work aims to analyze aspects of violence against the elderly in Brazil motivated by generational conflict. This is a cross-sectional, analytical study, with data on notifications of interpersonal and self-inflicted violence from the Disease Information and Notification System, in 2019, in Brazil. Poisson regression analyzes were performed, with robust variance, to estimate the crude and adjusted Prevalence Ratio (RP), with a 95% Confidence Interval (95%CI) between violence motivated by generational conflict and the victim's sociodemographic profile, types of violence, ties/relatives with the aggressor, and suspicion of alcohol use by the aggressor. The significance level was considered 5%. There were 23,698 reports of violence against people aged 60 to 120, 56.9% of which were women. Elderly people with white skin presented the highest number (50.5%) of all reported cases. Regarding marital status, 43.3% of victims were married or had a stable union. The data showed a lower level of education for 34.5% of the reported cases (1st to 4th incomplete grade of elementary school). Physical violence stands out in the findings of this study, affecting 55.6% of elderly victims, followed by neglect (28.0%) and psychological violence (27.2%). In relation to the bond between the aggressor and the victim, most cases of violence are committed by sons (38.0%). Suspicion of alcohol use by the aggressor occurred in 34.9% of cases and the majority (61.4%) of aggressors were aged between 20 and 59 years. The generational conflict motivated the act of violence for 3,884 elderly people, representing 24.3% of registered cases, followed by sexism 9.3% (n = 1,243) and homelessness 3.1% (n = 408). In the analysis of violence motivated by generational conflict, a lower prevalence was found for elderly people with secondary education (RP = 0.967) when compared to those with complete primary education or not; and among adult aggressors (RP = 0.847) and elderly aggressors (RP = 0.900) compared to those aged up to 19 years. It was associated with physical (RP = 1.069), psychological (RP = 1.066) and financial (RP = 1.064) violence, p < 0.05. An association was also observed with child aggressors (RP = 1.089) and with suspected alcohol use (RP = 1.055). Different forms of aggression were perpetrated against elderly people, such as physical, psychological and financial. The high number of reports of violence due to generational conflict stands out, being associated with victims with less education, aggressors up to 19 years old, children and those suspected of using alcohol. It is noteworthy that in addition to scientific production, there was technical production on the topic of violence, such as lectures, organization of events, training activities, mini-courses and educational pitch on the rights of elderly people.