[1] Lack of proper training for workers can conflict or hurt institutional goals for patients through improper implementation of treatments, compounded by organizational structures that may only have doctors and psychologists on site for short hours.
[1] In overstressed situations, power over the patients can bring feelings of control and significance, leading to stress being a predictor of abuse in institutional and familial settings.
In childcare situations, lack of curricular recreation for children can lead to more acting out behavior, causing more stress for workers, and more inclination toward mistreatment.
It is proposed that most abuse rises of out frustration and lack of ability to properly control the patient, not intentional maltreatment.
More and more programs are getting shut down through a movement called "Breaking Code Silence" started by Paris Hilton in 2020 where she publicly spoke about her abuse at Provo Canyon School in Utah.
[4] Under the Nazi regime of the early 1940s, this abuse took the form of sterilization of those purported to be "mentally ill", and general medical experimentation without consent or will to leave, and eugenics.
[4] The political nature of these policies lead to them being enforced by law under an ideology of purifying race of genetic deficiencies.
[4] But it is the shift from sterilization to euthanasia of the mentally ill or other politically undesirable groups in Nazi Germany that lead to the actions of the Holocaust.
[4] Japanese soldiers of the time also would use these groups as research subjects for infectious diseases and poisons, while Stalin's regime in Russia used the guise of mental illness to torture and punish political dissidents.
[4] The Army and CIA of the United States also have histories of testing psychiatric drugs on unwilling patients or soldiers.
LSD was tested by using prostitutes to trick men into taking the drug, and various combinations of depressants, hallucinogens, and stimulants would be given to unconsenting soldiers for observation of the effects.
[4] In response to many of these unethical experiments, specific ethical codes were developed to protect the rights of the participants and require informed consent.
[7] Definitions often include institutionally caused physical, psychological, financial, or sexual abuse or neglect.
Workers in assistance homes have suggested that program factors such as understaffing, focus on making money over human welfare, and ageism contributing to institutional abuse, aggravated by patients who may be difficult or struggling with mental health issues.
[9] Other intervention methods that are education based have high success rates in increasing awareness but less evidence of improving the welfares of elderly populations.