Psychiatrist: More resources needed to address deaths of elderly at home

Shane Su­perville

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh says that greater in­volve­ment from the State is nec­es­sary in iden­ti­fy­ing homes where el­der­ly peo­ple may not be re­ceiv­ing the care they need.

Deyals­ingh main­tains that such an ap­proach would im­prove ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to care, es­pe­cial­ly in light of two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents where el­der­ly women died and be­gan to de­com­pose at their re­spec­tive homes.

In the most re­cent in­ci­dent, the body of 74-year-old Doo­d­hani Vish­vati Sook­nanan was found un­der the bed of her Tore­nia Dri­ve, Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas home by po­lice on Thurs­day.

Of­fi­cers of the Ch­agua­nas CID vis­it­ed the home to con­duct a wel­fare check when they made the dis­cov­ery.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, Sook­nanan’s daugh­ter and grand­daugh­ter were al­so in the house with her de­com­pos­ing body, how­ev­er, her daugh­ter claimed that she did not see or hear her moth­er.

Last Oc­to­ber, the de­com­pos­ing body of 91-year-old Joyce Saun­ders was found at her Cher­ry Tree Cir­cle, San­ta Rosa Heights home.

Saun­ders al­so lived with her men­tal­ly ill daugh­ter, who was tak­en to St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh said both in­ci­dents were an ex­am­ple of the need for in­ter­ven­tion from the au­thor­i­ties, not­ing that co­hab­i­ta­tion did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean care­giv­ing.

“What we see is ‘care­giv­er col­lapse’ where the care­giv­er lacks the cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to death.

“This does jus­ti­fy ear­li­er and more as­sertive State in­volve­ment, not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion, but struc­tured over­sight.”

Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed that “vul­ner­a­ble homes” be iden­ti­fied on a com­mu­ni­ty ba­sis.

He said such homes would qual­i­fy as house­holds where el­der­ly peo­ple are de­pen­dent on a men­tal­ly ill care­giv­er, peo­ple with se­vere men­tal ill­ness liv­ing alone, homes with past wel­fare checks and po­lice in­volve­ment or peo­ple who have been known for hoard­ing, bar­ri­cad­ing or an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour.

As part of this in­ter­ven­tion, he al­so sug­gest­ed that plan­ning sim­i­lar to nat­ur­al dis­as­ter pro­to­cols be in­tro­duced, where a sec­ondary con­tact, such as a neigh­bour, rel­a­tive or non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, be no­ti­fied if an el­der­ly per­son dies and le­gal guardian­ship or over­sight arrange­ments be made ahead of time.

“These trag­ic deaths are not iso­lat­ed anom­alies. They rep­re­sent un­treat­ed or poor­ly man­aged men­tal ill­ness, so­cial iso­la­tion, frag­ile care­giv­ing arrange­ments and gaps in co­or­di­nat­ed com­mu­ni­ty over­sight.”

Deyals­ingh said lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors, through their own net­work of res­i­dents, could al­so work to­wards keep­ing abreast of any in­ci­dents in­volv­ing the el­der­ly or men­tal­ly ill.

“Ba­sic men­tal health aware­ness for coun­cil­lors and com­mu­ni­ty work­ers would sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove ear­ly de­tec­tion for per­sons who fall through the cracks and are nev­er di­ag­nosed as hav­ing a men­tal prob­lem to at­tend clin­ics.”

Po­lice sources said that as en­quiries in­to Sook­nanan’s death con­tin­ue, of­fi­cers from the Re­gion III Homi­cide Bu­reau are the main unit of over­sight in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, po­lice sources said that pend­ing the out­come of the au­top­sy, Sook­nanan’s death has been la­belled as an “un­usu­al/ sus­pi­cious” death, not­ing that the post-mortem would de­cide how in­ves­ti­ga­tors ap­proach the mat­ter.

“If there is any sug­ges­tion of foul play, well then the Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors will con­tin­ue the en­quiry.

“If, how­ev­er, there is no in­di­ca­tion of mur­der or any crim­i­nal ac­tion, then the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be done by the Ch­agua­nas charge room.

“It’s very im­por­tant to es­tab­lish in­tent and con­sid­er the ev­i­dence we have at this point and what there is to work with.”

The source al­so not­ed that of­fi­cers of the po­lice Cy­ber Crime and So­cial Me­dia Unit were in­volved in the en­quiry in re­la­tion to so­cial me­dia posts made by Sook­nanan’s rel­a­tive, which he said would be use­ful in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and es­tab­lish­ing a time­line of events.