Mother Kills Daughter / Self at Nursing Home

I wanted to update this post with a link to the letter Diana Harden sent to the local news channel. You can find it here, at the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR): http://canhr.org/newsroom/newdev_archive/2009/Noyes-nursing-home-letter.pdf

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This is a tragic situation - last week a 64 year old mother entered the nursing home where her 43 year old, disabled and brain damaged daughter lived, and killed her daughter and then herself. The whole event is a tragedy - not just the two women's deaths, but also what seems to have led up to the act.

I read the initial report of this crime the day it happened, and thought that it related to Gerontology studies for three reasons:

1. The mother was aging and it appeared that she was largely motivated to commit this crime because of ailing health, which would have ultimately limited her ability to advocate for her daughter. Aging and not being able to care for dependent loved ones is a Gerontology issue.
   
2. The daughter was in a nursing home and vulnerable. Though she's not of the "aged" cohort, she is within the same system of care that so many of our aging population fall into. Therefore, the issues of quality of care that were implied in the crime relate to Gerontology.
3. Even in the initial crime report, it seemed that this crime was motivated by some version of quality-of-life-motivated suicide that's often the fodder for assisted suicide and euthanasia arguments that we will only be seeing more of in the years to come.
   

This most recent article, which alludes to details that were given in the mother's letter to a local news channel, confirms a lot of my suspicions. Again, this tragedy is rife with all the things that can go wrong in caring for people in fragile economic and health states, and the numerous ways that government oversight can let things fall through the cracks. Perhaps the daughter would have been unhappy no matter where she stayed - it seems part of her brain damaged condition led her to be a pretty difficult patient. However, the fact that so many complaints have been registered against this home and so little official censuring (lots of confirmation, but little punishment) occurred will always leave a shadow (or pall) of doubt as to whether the outcome and quality of life could have been different had the checks and balances worked correctly here.

What are your thoughts about this in relation to Gerontology?