Institutional abuse

Institutional abuse is the maltreatment of a person, often a child or an older adult, by a system of power, occurring in settings such as foster homes, group homes, nursing facilities, and hospitals. It can take the form of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional harm, financial exploitation, verbal mistreatment, or discriminatory practice, and while it parallels the harms that occur within families, institutional settings also produce distinct problems such as inadequate service delivery and improper behavior-modification techniques. Children in out-of-home care, adults with intellectual disabilities, people with mental health conditions, and elderly people are especially vulnerable, and the abuse typically comes from facility staff rather than family members. It is generally described in three subcategories: overt abuse, meaning direct physical, sexual, or emotional harm inflicted by caregivers; program abuse, meaning systemic failures such as substandard conditions or inappropriate use of power; and system abuse, meaning widespread maltreatment stemming from resource constraints and understaffing. Contributing factors include inadequate staff training, stressful working environments, poor organizational policy, minimal community oversight, and insufficient staffing, and the troubled-teen industry has been identified as a setting where therapeutic marketing can conceal intentionally abusive practices, prompting advocacy such as the Breaking Code Silence movement following high-profile exposures. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/