EDUCATIONAL FOLDER AS A STRATEGY FOR HEALTH EDUCATION IN THE PREVENTION OF MALTREATMENT OF THE ELDERLY

Abstract

Violence against the elderly is considered a public health problem, as it causes damage to the health of the victims, such as agitation, fatigue, insomnia, fear, depression, psychosomatic diseases, physical trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and increased morbidity and mortality. Most long-lived people do not report the aggressions suffered due to the repression that can occur on the part of the aggressor, who in most cases is their caregiver. In this context, it is important to implement awareness strategies, such as educational actions, which seek to prevent abuse against the elderly. This study aimed to describe the creation and production process of an informative folder on the theme "maltreatment in the elderly", with the aim of using it in health promotion activities with institutionalized elderly. This is a non-experimental descriptive study, of the experience report type, as it points to the process of construction of an educational instrument, more precisely, an educational folder. To compose the educational material, publications from the SciELO databases, Virtual Health Library (VHL), MEDLINE, Google Scholar and websites of international and national government organizations were used. The graphic design and layout were done with Microsoft Word®, Microsoft Powerpoint and Canva® programs. For the textual composition, the "Arial" typeface, size 14, black color, in lower case and line spacing 1.4 was used. Regarding the structuring, the folder model proposed here was divided into three folds, formatted for A4 sheet, horizontal orientation and was folded according to the sequence of arguments. Face 1 of the folder consisted of the cover, with the image of an elderly woman and the title: Maltreatment of the elderly – risk factors and violence in the elderly. The rest of the folder was structured in topic format, starting with the item "what is maltreatment of the elderly", followed by the themes "types of violence", "risk factors" and "be aware of the signs of abuse". Each topic contained information regarding the titles and these were described in a simple and didactic way and in an informal way. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, the support networks for the protection of the elderly and the data referring to the bibliographic references and the institutions involved in the preparation of the folder were added. The folder presented current and relevant content, and can be used by family members, caregivers and health professionals. As for its characteristics, the following are listed: textual simplicity, objectivity of its information and clear language that is easy to understand by the target audience. These attributes are in line with the literature researched.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2025.011-015