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Gériatrie et Psychologie Neuropsychiatrie du Vieillissement

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Systemic reading, another way of thinking to apprehend situations of elderly abuse Volume 11, issue 4, Décembre 2013

Authors
Université de Toulouse Le Mirail, LCPI EA 4591, Toulouse, France, Laboratoire de psychopathologie et processus de santé EA 4057, Institut de psychologie, Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France, Université de Toulouse Le Mirail, Octogone EA 5155, Toulouse, France

In 2007, a national call number was created to receive reports of ill-treatment for aged or handicapped subjects, and departmental platforms of phone-tapping were organized. Professionals of listening receive the calls for assistance or confidences of distresses related to ill treatments. They should initiate a relationship and assess the danger of the condition, therefore, in a systemic paradigm, performing a double task. According to the systemic approach, ill-treatments are usually the product of interaction and not that of an individual. They do not only concern individuals which suffer or undergo ill treatment but a system including all people leaving at home and social environment. To apprehend the complex relationships of ill treatments by professional of listening requires clarification of the situation together initiating a relation of confidence between the person calling and the professional. Therefore, the requests necessary for clarification should not be intrusive but create conditions of an exchange of information allowing a co-construction with the person calling for help. To accommodate a call for a critic situation, we need to take into account the context and not to be focused on the search of the causes of ill-treatment.