A risk in the healthcare setting is a most considered when it comes to adult care and child care. A risk is a chance or the possibility to get exposed to injuries and accidents. A risk can be seen in financial, social, physical as well as psychological ways. Risk factors linked to the incidences of abuse and self-harm are broadly classified into three categories. These are individual factors, family factors and social or environmental factors. The risk factors include any kind of disability (physical/ cognitive/emotional), any physical or mental disorder, aggressive behaviour, temperaments and attention deficits. The family risk factors include abuse by family, violence or regular conflicts, history of neglect, high family stress, poor interaction with family members, separation or divorce, low self-esteem and use of corporal punishment Children who are abused by their parents tend to be abusive according to www mentalhealth.net. Children who are abused often convinced they deserve it. Social or environment contribute to the incidence of abuse, a constant argument at home or bullying at school affects them to turn abusive and hurt others. Socio-economic disadvantage, unemployment, social isolation, inadequate housing, homelessness, lack of access to social support, discrimination or racism, stressful life event, Drug misuse and alcohol can cause people to physically hurt others which will result to mental health issues and death.
Normally, elderly people suffer from abuse due to their dependency and illnesses (Donald, 2010). Dependency or disorders makes the person not to act in abusive situations and take any action against it. In this situation, the dependant feels trapped and powerless due to fear and frustration. In the Daily Mail, an elderly woman suffers abuse at the hands of a carer on whom the lady the dependant for help. She couldn’t take action against her due to her helplessness. These risk factors ls Isolation: The client may be socially isolated and lacks support from society. In such cases, the level of abuse will be high. The factors increasing the likelihood of abuse are physical isolation, social isolation, and emotional isolation, an absence of adequate of the support or relief.
Psychological conditions: In most cases, the mental health of the abuser is the major contributing factor to abuse others. Abuses occur when perpetrator has a long history of mental illness, difficulty in controlling anger and suffers from low self-esteem.
Those are the risk factors leading to abuse and self-harm. These risk factors are crucial to understand by the professionals to look for ways to mitigate the abuses. ad to different kinds of abuses and self-harm. Understanding of these risk factors is crucial to help professionals working to prevent such abuses to look for ways to curb them and help the victims to cope with the abuses.