Privatization of old age: suffering, disease e violence in the relationship between elderly people and caregivers

Abstract

Our article discusses the effect of the “privatization of old age” on the quality of care and the life of the older adults and family caregivers, by crossing three procedures: study of the medical records data of the older adult served in 2009-2017 at the Service of Protection and Specialized Assistance to Families and Individuals (PAEFI) of a city in the state of São Paulo; study of the results of instruments to verify signs of violence; and qualitative analysis of interviews with the older adults and caregivers. The discussion introduces an original reflection of the “privatization of old age”, considering not only the general tendency to disassemble social protection systems and establish a family-based model of care for the older adults, but also the effects of encapsulating the domestic sphere as private life, the progress of the nuclearization of family policies, the growing pregnancy of neoliberal models of sociability and subjectivation. These processes are analyzed considering the intertwined dynamics of social inequalities and family care policies. The results allow to capture pathogenic and violentgenic effects of these processes, as corroborated by data on evidence (84%) and risk (62.1%) of violence and frequency of health problems (80%) and common mental disorder (55.2%). between caregivers.