"Seven Pounds" isn't a feel-good film, but for anyone who has watched a loved
one suffer neglect in a nursing home, it contains at least one cathartic scene.
The protagonist known as Ben Thomas finds an elderly woman suffering silently
in a nursing home where an administrator deprives her of baths because she
refuses to take medication that makes her dizzy. Outraged, Ben scoops the woman
into his arms and delivers her to the washroom, demanding that nurses bathe
her. Then he slams the administrator into a window and warns him that he should
learn to "show these people some respect" if he does not want to face Ben's
wrath again.

Physical assault surely is not an advisable strategy for responding to elder
abuse. But a recent nationwide spate of high-profile elder-abuse cases suggests
that we could use a little more righteous indignation when it comes to
mistreatment of our elders.

The most lurid headlines came last week from Minnesota, where two teenage girls
are charged with abusing 15 demented residents in the nursing home where they
worked as nursing assistants. Among the allegations: The girls spit in the
residents' mouths, poked and groped their breasts and genitals, spanked them,
taunted them until they screamed and photographed them during the abuse. Four
other teenage girls were charged with failing to report the abuse.

In the same week, Michigan officials charged a 50-year-old man with murder
after his 73-year-old mother died of neglect while living in his care. Police
say the man confined his mother to a living-room couch for eight months,
refusing to bathe her and forcing her to urinate in a coffee cup and defecate
in pizza boxes. She died weighing only 63 pounds, after suffering from sepsis
caused by feces that had seeped into her open sores.

In that same quiet subdivision, officials also discovered a 95-year-old woman
condemned to live in filth by her negligent nephew. A neighbor told The Flint
Journal that she had considered checking on the woman, but didn't. As another
neighbor explained, "You don't want to get into anybody's business."

Closer to home, a 34-year-old southwest Missouri man will stand trial next
month in Greene County on charges of kicking and injuring his 89-year-old
great-grandmother and stomping his 72-year-old grandmother to death while
wearing steel-toed boots. A caretaker who said she witnessed the violence
reported that the man had called his grandmother by a vulgar name and openly
expressed his rage at her long before he killed her.

Reports of such abuse are increasingly common. According to a National Center
on Elder Abuse survey, more than 565,000 cases of suspected elder abuse were
reported in 2003 — an increase of nearly 20 percent from 2000. Experts say
those statistics drastically underestimate the problem, since most victims are
too isolated or impaired to communicate their suffering.

Relieving the isolation of elders and their caregivers is one way to curb
abuse. Another is to reconsider the meager training standards, pay and respect
we accord to the care-giving profession and the lack of support we offer to
relatives caring for elders at home.

Still more fundamental is a reorientation in the way we think about aging. In a
youth-obsessed culture that treats aging as a contagious disease, we must teach
our children by example that elders are gifts, not burdens, and bearers of
dignity no matter how disabled they become.

Given that the average American now lives 78 years, most of us can plan on
experiencing the vulnerability of old age firsthand. That's all the more reason
to treat today's elders with the respect and compassion that we hope tomorrow's
caregivers will show us.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.