After it was revealed in February 2013 that San Diego’s former mayor, 67 year old Maureen O’Connor, lost more than a billion dollars at casinos, the gaming industry shed its disguise and became the gambling industry again. This was definitely not entertainment.
Maureen O’Connor reported that she was suffering from a brain tumor that might have impaired her judgment. A vulnerability that was not moderated by Las Vegas casinos sending private jets to fetch Ms O’Connor from San Diego. A trend that was also seen with Terry Watanabe who risked more than $825 million in 2007 at two casinos owned by Harrah's where it is alleged Harrah's senior management made a conscious decision to exploit his well-known addiction with alcohol and prescription drugs. No lawsuit has ever won. But what they do is expose the human tragedy fueled by the industry’s predatory use of complimentary services called “comps” against the increasing vulnerability of some older adults.
Bill Kearney—a staunch advocate for effective regulations of casinos—defines the world of comping in his excellent 2001 book “Comped”. Comping might start off with a free room, meals, free drinks and then, like Ms. O’Connor, ends up with to limos, helicopter and Lear Jet flights, interest-free loans, and lavish penthouse suites that the casinos provide as they cultivate their profits. These comps are in addition to exemptions that the gambling industry has gained, including no-limit ATM machines, sales tax exemptions, smoking exemptions, and many others. All these exemptions and comps transform the industry from one of entertainment—where you pay a predefined cost for a service—to predation.
Predation involves monitoring older adults’ gambling behavior and promoting both the frequency—through comping—or the amount—through interest-free loans, cashless gambling, free alcohol and medication pills. When you have older adults with obvious cognitive impairment then you need to question if such predatory behavior constitutes financial elder abuse under state laws.
In California, financial elder abuse has both criminal and civil definitions that apply to anyone 65 or older regardless of whether they have any diminished physical or mental capacity. Financial elder abuse occurs when any person or entity—takes, secrets, appropriates, obtains or retains real or personal property of an elder for a wrongful use or with intent to defraud—including assisting. “Wrongful use” is when a person “knew or should have known that this conduct is likely to be harmful to the elder.” Cal. Welfare & Institutions Code §15610.30.
This definition makes for a perfect storm. With increasing penetration of the gambling industry into nearly all States, increasing prevalence of older adults with cognitive and physical frailty, and an increasing awareness by families of the signs of financial elder abuse we might see our first test case of financial elder abuse laws against casinos. When Harrah’s comps $1.1 million to AARP we have to question what AARP is gambling with, and what are we likely to lose. Thom Reilly, executive director of the Harrah’s Foundation explained that “This relationship with the AARP Foundation allows us to extend our reach into that community and help them address caregiving issues.”
© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett
About Me
- Mario Garrett
- Mario D. Garrett, Ph.D., is a professor of gerontology at San Diego State University, California. Garrett was nominated in 2022 and 2023 as "...the most popular gerontology instructor in the nation,” according to authority.org. He has worked and lectured at the London School of Economics/Surrey University, Bristol University, Bath University, University of North Texas, University of British Colombia, Tokyo University, University of Costa Rica, Bogazici University, and at the University of New Mexico. As the team leader of a United Nations Population Fund, with the United Nations International Institute on Aging, he coordinated a five-year project looking at support for the elderly in the People’s Republic of China. Garrett founded the international aging magazine ‘BOLD’, now the “International Journal on Ageing in Developing Countries.” His 2013 talk on University of California San Diego TV had just under 2 million views. Garrett has over 50 academic publications, hundreds of blogs, and ten non-fiction books. You can find his work at www.mariogarrett.com
Friday, February 14, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Cholesterol and our Aging Brains
Cholesterol is in every cell in our body and becomes concentrated
in our brain. Our brain is 60% fat, with over 25% of that being
cholesterol. Most of the cholesterol in the brain is produced in the
hypothalamus itself, establishing cholesterol as an integral part of our brain.
One of the most dramatic difference between young and old
brains is the reduced myelination—fat sheathing—around nerves, which might
explain why aging brains shrink at 1% a year. Myelin is a sheet of lipid, or
fat, with the highest cholesterol content of any brain tissue. Even neurotransmitters,
the chemical words used in the language that the brain communicates in, are
made of cholesterol. George Bartzokis, with UCLA, and his colleagues, found a correlation
between diminishing speed of performing tasks and diminishing level of
myelination. The older we get, the less myelination we have. And in older age
we can destroy this protective layer much faster through excessive alcohol intake
and some non-/prescription drugs.
Myelination seems to be important in how we learn. Although
grey matter—on the outside of the cortex made up of neurons—carry messages and
does the “thinking”—white matter—the myelinated part of the brain—controls the
strength of signals. Myelination is how we learn, strengthening some signals
above others. Myelination also occurs in at different ages. Starting from the
back of the brain as children, and finishing off at the front of the brain in
adulthood. This explains why certain tasks are easier when you are a child then
at older ages (learning to speak without an accent.)
And the role of cholesterol seems crucial to this process of
myelination. In 2008 Rebecca West and her colleagues from Mount Sinai School of
Medicine, New York, unexpectedly found that among normal—no expression of
dementia and not having the genes that predispose you to get dementia—older
adults aged 85 years and older, high total cholesterol and high LDL (bad) cholesterol
were associated with higher memory scores.
Other evidence is mounting. Elizabeth Johnson and Ernst Schaefer
with Tufts University, Boston, MA conjectured that one commercially available
fish oil capsule per week—180 mg dietary DHA/d—might reduce the risk of
dementia by half. On the negative side,
two small trials published in 2000 and 2004 by Matthew Muldoon from the
University of Pittsburgh, suggest that prescription medication we use to lower
cholesterol—statins—might bring about cognitive decline. He reported that
participants taking placebo pills improved on repeated tests of attention and
reaction while those on statins did not. This was further confirmed by anecdotal
evidence published in an article in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics which
reported that among 60 statin users who
had reported memory problems to MedWatch, when they stopped taking the medication
more than half reported improved memory.
Science is not truer than religion. Science is being able to
challenge the accepted reality of today. Science is a method rather than a body
of truths. The method is to question beliefs, to test expectations. The problem
with science in large U.S. institutions is that it has become a religion.
© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Leaving Behind the Victim of Dementia
Unfortunately, I come across many anecdotal stories of
caregivers dying. And as a result, leaving
behind the person who depended upon them. Increasingly, those left behind are
suffering from dementia.
This observation raises two questions. The obvious one,
which is an emotional question; who will look after the care recipient now? But
a second question has a more radical focus; why are these caregivers dying
earlier?
What has been described as a ‘living bereavement’, caring
for a loved one with dementia becomes increasingly difficult the further the
disease progresses. Unlike most other caregiving, where the care, in most
cases, becomes less stressful because the person improves (eg some stroke
patients) or they grow up (eg children) or they die quickly (eg some cancer
patients) , with dementia the diseases progressively incapacitates the victim. With
further incapacity comes a greater burden on the caregiver. Caregivers of loved
ones with dementia carry an extra burden that is reflected in more sever and
negative effects.
Although David Roth and his colleagues, in their study of 3,503
family caregivers, reported that caregiving was not associated with increased
risk of death, they failed to identify the specific type—and intensity—of care
being provided. Not all caregiving is the same. And you learn that when you
look after a victim of dementia.
As early as 1990, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser from Ohio State
University and her colleagues measured the different impact caring for a
patient with dementia had on their caregivers. They reported that caregivers of
people with dementia had significantly more depression, reported less support
and fewer important personal relationships, and experienced more days of
illnesses from infections, when compared with caregivers of non-demented loved
ones. What was convincing in their argument is that these caregivers had physical
immunological deficiencies. They were sicker.
Richard Schulz and his colleagues from the University of
Pittsburgh in 1999 showed how even after adjusting for a variety of factors, caregivers
who are experiencing strain had mortality risks that were 63% higher than non-caregiving
controls. The beneficial spiritual and physical effects of caregiving do
not override the negative effects of caring for someone with dementia.
One indicator of sickness, which also reduces your
lifespan—is the size of your telomeres. These DNA blocks at the end of each of
our 46 chromosomes have been likened to an aglet—the plastic at the end of
shoelaces. The size of these telomeres determine how many times each cell can
replicate—the longer the telomeres, the more your cell can replicate, the longer
they live, the longer you live. There are numerous studies being published
showing how stress and trauma reduces telomeres. With varying intensities of
care there are reduction in these telomeres. Dementia caregivers not only have
vastly shortened telomeres, but this change is permanent even after their loved
one dies. Despite most caregivers of dementing illness being older and frailer
than other caregivers, most choose to look after their loved ones. The
decision, of whether providing this care accelerates your mortality faster than
the mortality of your care recipient, is not an easy one to make.
© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Older Adults' Fascination with Obituaries
The fascination of reading the obituaries forms a purely older adult phenomenon. And it is not a morbid fascination with death, but a testament that the reader is still alive. Longevity is related to being happy with your lot. Even if you could change events, you wouldn’t--that kind of happiness. Because the only anti-aging that nature knows is death, nature rewards those who accept aging and the losses we experience on the way.
How older adults deal with loss points to effective strategies that they have learned to use in maintaining an optimistic perspective. These are patterns of coping that start early in life. These coping strategies result in less damage to the body and result in greater longevity. One theory popular in the 1980s is now known as the Baltes’s Selective Optimization with Compensation—SOC—theory. Here Baltes describes strategies of how we address physical and mental losses as we age in order to minimize their effect.
Let's take for example that you are becoming deaf. The theory predicts three main strategies that older adults follow. First you become selective. You will increasingly choose quieter social settings without conflicting noises. You stop going to loud parties. Then you will optimize those situations that you choose to participate in. You will choose to be with people that you can hear better, sitting closer, giving them your best ear, you optimize what hearing you do have. This optimizes your remaining ability to listen. Lastly, you will start to compensate. You might start going to the cinema or theatre more where you do not have to converse with anyone. You might do more activities where you do not have to talk (running, swimming, hiking.) You might also compensate by learning to use hearing aides. These three SOC strategies allow you to participate without drastically changing your lifestyle. SOC is a strategy for accepting your losses. To focus on what you can do rather than what you cannot do. This strategy, learned earlier on, gets more useful with increasing age as we experience more deficits.
One of the uniquely frequent experiences in older age is the death of a close friend. Although death never becomes easier to accept--it is so final--there is a greater appreciation of acceptance. In 2001 Christopher Davis from St. Francis Xavier University and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema from the University of Michigan reported that older adults who have lost a loved one often try to extract some meaning of their loss. Even if meaning cannot be found the authors report that older adults search for some benefit in the loss. This is different from grief of younger adults or children. The belief that there is meaning or some benefit even in anguish of loss suggest a positive strategy. Again, the strategy of SOC is to accept the reality and to try and compensate the loss by finding some hidden meaning or benefit.
The philosophy is “it could be worse.” Which brings us back to the fascination older adults have with the obituaries. You are always better than those who are dead.
© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett
How older adults deal with loss points to effective strategies that they have learned to use in maintaining an optimistic perspective. These are patterns of coping that start early in life. These coping strategies result in less damage to the body and result in greater longevity. One theory popular in the 1980s is now known as the Baltes’s Selective Optimization with Compensation—SOC—theory. Here Baltes describes strategies of how we address physical and mental losses as we age in order to minimize their effect.
Let's take for example that you are becoming deaf. The theory predicts three main strategies that older adults follow. First you become selective. You will increasingly choose quieter social settings without conflicting noises. You stop going to loud parties. Then you will optimize those situations that you choose to participate in. You will choose to be with people that you can hear better, sitting closer, giving them your best ear, you optimize what hearing you do have. This optimizes your remaining ability to listen. Lastly, you will start to compensate. You might start going to the cinema or theatre more where you do not have to converse with anyone. You might do more activities where you do not have to talk (running, swimming, hiking.) You might also compensate by learning to use hearing aides. These three SOC strategies allow you to participate without drastically changing your lifestyle. SOC is a strategy for accepting your losses. To focus on what you can do rather than what you cannot do. This strategy, learned earlier on, gets more useful with increasing age as we experience more deficits.
One of the uniquely frequent experiences in older age is the death of a close friend. Although death never becomes easier to accept--it is so final--there is a greater appreciation of acceptance. In 2001 Christopher Davis from St. Francis Xavier University and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema from the University of Michigan reported that older adults who have lost a loved one often try to extract some meaning of their loss. Even if meaning cannot be found the authors report that older adults search for some benefit in the loss. This is different from grief of younger adults or children. The belief that there is meaning or some benefit even in anguish of loss suggest a positive strategy. Again, the strategy of SOC is to accept the reality and to try and compensate the loss by finding some hidden meaning or benefit.
The philosophy is “it could be worse.” Which brings us back to the fascination older adults have with the obituaries. You are always better than those who are dead.
© USA Copyrighted 2014 Mario D. Garrett
Sunday, December 8, 2013
The Death Experience.
Older Adults do not fear death they fear dying. Specifically,
we fear a prolonged process of dying—the agonal image of death. This is not a
new observation.
Lora-Jean Collett and David Lester made this distinction in 1969 and devised a scale to distinguish between the fear of death from the fear of the process of dying. Some older adults are better at confronting death than others. In an interesting study, James Griffith from Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania and his colleagues examined attitudes toward dying and death among older men who had different experiences with danger. The group of men included skydivers (high death risk), nursing home residents (high death exposure), volunteer firefighters (high death risk and high death exposure), and a control group. Their analyses identified that accepting death by risking death, reduces the fear of death. High death riskers are better at accepting death. It seems that the fear of death can be minimized, perhaps not only by risking death.
Studies with nurses have reported that working with dying patients diminished their fear of death. This acceptance of death occurred while in nurse training as well. As always, the fear is brought on more by the unknown. And this fear determines how we behave. Balfour Mount, a palliative care specialist suggested that deep-rooted existential fear of death prevents healthcare professionals from providing good and compassionate care for the dying.
Maturity involves an appreciation that dying is itself a process. A process which, at the very end, we seem to share with other people across many cultures.
Raymond Moody coined the term “Near Death Experience”—NDE. As early 1975 Moody described survivors who ‘let go’ and accepted their death, but when they survived, reported experiences of great joy. Although there are exceptions—especially with the use of medications at the end-of-life—Moody describes how after travelling through darkness they came against a bright light, accompanying “beings of light” that helped them to review their life. Such experiences have been shown to be experienced across many cultures. And the interesting outcome after these NDEs is that these individuals report having a diminished fear of death.
It was up to a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M to find some of the physiology reasons for NDEs. James E. Whinnery studied fighter pilots subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. What he found is that under extreme g-forces, fighter pilots experience gravitationally-induced loss of consciousness—G-LOC—similar to NDEs in many of its characteristics, including the tunnel experience and the bright lights. Only when Whinnery went beyond the pilots losing consciousness, to the brink of near death, did the fighter pilots have a near death experience.
We are conscious of our death and we have developed an evolutionary positive method of dealing with it. Death, as defined by our evolution, is a positive experience. Death might be detrimental to the individual, but it is imperative for the specie to survive. It is appropriate that evolution honors this. The way to reduce our fear of death is to confront it, dying itself is a positive experience.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
Lora-Jean Collett and David Lester made this distinction in 1969 and devised a scale to distinguish between the fear of death from the fear of the process of dying. Some older adults are better at confronting death than others. In an interesting study, James Griffith from Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania and his colleagues examined attitudes toward dying and death among older men who had different experiences with danger. The group of men included skydivers (high death risk), nursing home residents (high death exposure), volunteer firefighters (high death risk and high death exposure), and a control group. Their analyses identified that accepting death by risking death, reduces the fear of death. High death riskers are better at accepting death. It seems that the fear of death can be minimized, perhaps not only by risking death.
Studies with nurses have reported that working with dying patients diminished their fear of death. This acceptance of death occurred while in nurse training as well. As always, the fear is brought on more by the unknown. And this fear determines how we behave. Balfour Mount, a palliative care specialist suggested that deep-rooted existential fear of death prevents healthcare professionals from providing good and compassionate care for the dying.
Maturity involves an appreciation that dying is itself a process. A process which, at the very end, we seem to share with other people across many cultures.
Raymond Moody coined the term “Near Death Experience”—NDE. As early 1975 Moody described survivors who ‘let go’ and accepted their death, but when they survived, reported experiences of great joy. Although there are exceptions—especially with the use of medications at the end-of-life—Moody describes how after travelling through darkness they came against a bright light, accompanying “beings of light” that helped them to review their life. Such experiences have been shown to be experienced across many cultures. And the interesting outcome after these NDEs is that these individuals report having a diminished fear of death.
It was up to a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M to find some of the physiology reasons for NDEs. James E. Whinnery studied fighter pilots subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. What he found is that under extreme g-forces, fighter pilots experience gravitationally-induced loss of consciousness—G-LOC—similar to NDEs in many of its characteristics, including the tunnel experience and the bright lights. Only when Whinnery went beyond the pilots losing consciousness, to the brink of near death, did the fighter pilots have a near death experience.
We are conscious of our death and we have developed an evolutionary positive method of dealing with it. Death, as defined by our evolution, is a positive experience. Death might be detrimental to the individual, but it is imperative for the specie to survive. It is appropriate that evolution honors this. The way to reduce our fear of death is to confront it, dying itself is a positive experience.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Cougar Sex
David M Buss has been writing about older women’s sexual adventures for some time. He notes in “Why Women Have Sex” that women use sex as a defensive tactic against a mate’s infidelity (protection), as a ploy to boost self-confidence (status), as a barter for gifts or household chores (resource acquisition), or as a cure for a migraine headache (medication). Like most of men's evaluation of women’s sexuality, pleasure is not one of the reasons explored.
Using Craigslist to enlist three quarters of their volunteers Buss and his colleagues found that women aged 27 through 45 years of age report having more sexual fantasies, more intensely and engaging in more sexual encounters than their younger cohorts. The impact of marriage and having children was not found to be as important as age . Only age had a strong positive effect on women's reported sexual interest and behavior. Women’s sexual awakening seems to be formidable.
Women’s sexual interest was believed to peak and then fall precipitously after menopause. But this drop might be a misinterpretation by some researchers.
Susan E. Trompeter, and her colleagues from the University of California San Diego looked at women 25 years after their menopause. Half (49.8%) reported sexual activity within the past month with or without a partner. Sexual activity included arousal (64.5%), lubrication (69%), and orgasm (67.1%) at least most of the time. Only a third reported low, very low, or no sexual desire. Although frequency of sexual activity decreased with age, they all reported increased satisfaction when they did have an orgasm.
Having the brain as one of the largest sex organ—together with the skin—determines that emotional closeness is associated with more frequent arousal, lubrication, and orgasm during sex. Overall, two thirds of sexually active women were moderately or very satisfied with their sex life. With such statistics, the idea of peaking only before menopause seems a myth. For some women they keep on going.
Little is written about late life sexual activity except for educational purpose. What has been written is about marriage from public records. In a recent article in an unlikely journal of Review of Economics and Statistics, Hani Mansour and Terra McKinnish from the University of Colorado reported that couples with big age differences are typically less attractive, less educated and make less money than couples of similar ages. The more pronounced the age difference the less positive attributes they had.
Interestingly, they make a class issue (using education as a proxy for class.) More educated people tend to interact more with people their own age while those with lower formal education and who work in low-skill jobs are more likely to socialize with people of a wide range of ages. Poorer people have networks that are more age diverse. But this might be about marriage, a social contract.
Pleasure comes in many forms and sexual gratification is one of them. Marriage is not an indication of pleasure, but age is. Maurice Chevalier’s "never date anyone under half your age plus seven" might be appropriate for most people but it might not apply to some older women. Sexual arousal for older women matches those of younger men.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
Using Craigslist to enlist three quarters of their volunteers Buss and his colleagues found that women aged 27 through 45 years of age report having more sexual fantasies, more intensely and engaging in more sexual encounters than their younger cohorts. The impact of marriage and having children was not found to be as important as age . Only age had a strong positive effect on women's reported sexual interest and behavior. Women’s sexual awakening seems to be formidable.
Women’s sexual interest was believed to peak and then fall precipitously after menopause. But this drop might be a misinterpretation by some researchers.
Susan E. Trompeter, and her colleagues from the University of California San Diego looked at women 25 years after their menopause. Half (49.8%) reported sexual activity within the past month with or without a partner. Sexual activity included arousal (64.5%), lubrication (69%), and orgasm (67.1%) at least most of the time. Only a third reported low, very low, or no sexual desire. Although frequency of sexual activity decreased with age, they all reported increased satisfaction when they did have an orgasm.
Having the brain as one of the largest sex organ—together with the skin—determines that emotional closeness is associated with more frequent arousal, lubrication, and orgasm during sex. Overall, two thirds of sexually active women were moderately or very satisfied with their sex life. With such statistics, the idea of peaking only before menopause seems a myth. For some women they keep on going.
Little is written about late life sexual activity except for educational purpose. What has been written is about marriage from public records. In a recent article in an unlikely journal of Review of Economics and Statistics, Hani Mansour and Terra McKinnish from the University of Colorado reported that couples with big age differences are typically less attractive, less educated and make less money than couples of similar ages. The more pronounced the age difference the less positive attributes they had.
Interestingly, they make a class issue (using education as a proxy for class.) More educated people tend to interact more with people their own age while those with lower formal education and who work in low-skill jobs are more likely to socialize with people of a wide range of ages. Poorer people have networks that are more age diverse. But this might be about marriage, a social contract.
Pleasure comes in many forms and sexual gratification is one of them. Marriage is not an indication of pleasure, but age is. Maurice Chevalier’s "never date anyone under half your age plus seven" might be appropriate for most people but it might not apply to some older women. Sexual arousal for older women matches those of younger men.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
Children Killing Their Parents
As upsetting as it is, there are numerous blogs on how to kill your parents. Unlike elder abuse, killing younger parents seems to be voyeuristic entertainment. This surprising revelation is worrisome
The animosity children feel towards their parents provides a necessary feeling of detachment, augurs for a healthy separation process from their parents. It is how they differentiate themselves from their primary influences in life in order for them to become whole persons. Such feelings are nothing new. The surprise being websites devoted to killing one’s parents, with instructions. Then the second surprise was the statistics.
For more than two decades, Kathleen Heide from the University of South Florida has been conducting analysis of homicides where children kill their parents. In the USA about five parents a week are killed by their biological children. Matricide—where the mother is murdered--and patricide—where the father is murdered—are both very rare events and constitute about 1 percent of all homicides in the United States—but we have a lot of homicides in the US.
In a 2011 report from the Department of Justice, Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith reported a change in trend of family homicide. The most common were homicide by a spouse or ex-spouse, which is declining from 52% of all family homicides in 1980 to 37% in 2008. Children killed by their parents were the second most frequent type of family homicide. This is seeing an increase, from 15% in 1980 to 25% in 2008. But the fastest growing homicide is the last category where parents are killed by one of their children. This type of homicide has been increasing steadily from 9.7% of all family homicides in 1980 to 13% in 2008. Children killing their parents is the fastest growing type of family homicide. In the latest federal statistics both matricide and patricide is committed primarily by sons between 16-19 years and then declines rapidly at older ages.
In 1993 Clifford J. Linedecker wrote a book on “Killer Kids” where he reports that there were over a million assaults in the USA by children on their parents, some were fatal. He documents some of the most horrific cases. Most use their parents’ guns, others use knives, axes and any available weapon. The younger killers are more likely to use their parents’ gun.
Since patricide is most frequent (nearly twice as likely as matricide) and increasing, there might be a number of reasons for this. With increasing breakdown of family structure in the USA--with one in two marriages ending up in divorce--there is a risk of one parent alienating their children against the second parent. Parental alienation is on the increase as are children killing their fathers. Very often the father (rather than the mother) becomes portrayed as the reason for all the negative emotions. Parental alienation does not start or end with divorce. But there are reasons for this behavior. We just need to find that reasoning, however repugnant and irrational.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
The animosity children feel towards their parents provides a necessary feeling of detachment, augurs for a healthy separation process from their parents. It is how they differentiate themselves from their primary influences in life in order for them to become whole persons. Such feelings are nothing new. The surprise being websites devoted to killing one’s parents, with instructions. Then the second surprise was the statistics.
For more than two decades, Kathleen Heide from the University of South Florida has been conducting analysis of homicides where children kill their parents. In the USA about five parents a week are killed by their biological children. Matricide—where the mother is murdered--and patricide—where the father is murdered—are both very rare events and constitute about 1 percent of all homicides in the United States—but we have a lot of homicides in the US.
In a 2011 report from the Department of Justice, Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith reported a change in trend of family homicide. The most common were homicide by a spouse or ex-spouse, which is declining from 52% of all family homicides in 1980 to 37% in 2008. Children killed by their parents were the second most frequent type of family homicide. This is seeing an increase, from 15% in 1980 to 25% in 2008. But the fastest growing homicide is the last category where parents are killed by one of their children. This type of homicide has been increasing steadily from 9.7% of all family homicides in 1980 to 13% in 2008. Children killing their parents is the fastest growing type of family homicide. In the latest federal statistics both matricide and patricide is committed primarily by sons between 16-19 years and then declines rapidly at older ages.
In 1993 Clifford J. Linedecker wrote a book on “Killer Kids” where he reports that there were over a million assaults in the USA by children on their parents, some were fatal. He documents some of the most horrific cases. Most use their parents’ guns, others use knives, axes and any available weapon. The younger killers are more likely to use their parents’ gun.
Since patricide is most frequent (nearly twice as likely as matricide) and increasing, there might be a number of reasons for this. With increasing breakdown of family structure in the USA--with one in two marriages ending up in divorce--there is a risk of one parent alienating their children against the second parent. Parental alienation is on the increase as are children killing their fathers. Very often the father (rather than the mother) becomes portrayed as the reason for all the negative emotions. Parental alienation does not start or end with divorce. But there are reasons for this behavior. We just need to find that reasoning, however repugnant and irrational.
© USA Copyrighted 2013 Mario D. Garrett
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