Violência financeira e patrimonial contra pessoas idosas durante a pandemia da Covid-19.

Abstract

The elderly population has been increasing considerably in recent years worldwide, and in Brazil, the statistics are no different. At the same time, reports of violence against the elderly also increased, becoming a serious social problem, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, when this population was more vulnerable. In the first five months of 2023, 15.2 thousand complaints were registered regarding financial or property violence against this population. In this context, financial and property violence has received special attention due to its high occurrence. The general objective of the study was to capture narratives that express episodes of financial and property violence against elderly people during the covid-19 pandemic. Exploratory study with a qualitative design carried out with 20 elderly people intentionally selected in the Primary Health Care (PHC) setting in the municipalities of Acari (RN), Conceição (PB) and São João do Sabugi (RN). For data collection, the following were used: I) Sociodemographic questionnaire; and II) Semi-structured interview script. Collection activities were carried out from January to February 2023. The narratives were processed in the IRAMUTEQ software in the Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC) modality and the textual contents were analyzed based on the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2016). Based on the results obtained in Class 6 of the dendrogram “The lack of protection of the elderly against financial and property violence”, three categories of analysis were constructed: I) The (in)visible increase in cases of financial and property violence against elderly people during the pandemic from covid-19; II) (In)tangible repercussions of financial and property violence on the health and lives of elderly people; III) Financial and property violence from the perspective of elderly people: ignorance or a culture of silencing?. The existence of cases of financial and property violence against elderly people during the covid-19 pandemic was well-known, and those that predominated were payroll loans and income sequestration. There is a need to raise awareness in society about the importance of reporting cases of financial and property violence against the elderly population, in addition to training professionals so that they can identify cases of violence and include discussion of this topic during the graduation of health professionals.