Elder Abuse and Neglect

Elder abuse and neglect encompass a range of harmful behaviors toward older adults—physical, emotional, financial, and through simple failure to provide adequate care—and demographic research works to establish how common these experiences are across different populations and living situations, from private households to long-term care facilities. Prevalence estimates vary widely because mistreatment often goes unreported, making it difficult to identify who is most at risk and under what conditions abuse is most likely to occur. Evidence increasingly shows that mistreatment is associated with significantly elevated mortality risk, independent of other health factors, which raises urgent questions about what kinds of interventions can reliably reduce harm once abuse is detected. Researchers are actively working to understand the causal pathways linking social isolation, cognitive decline, and financial vulnerability to abuse, and to develop screening tools and community-based responses that hold up across diverse cultural and institutional contexts.

Works

32,351

Total citations

178,426

Keywords

Elder AbuseNeglectFinancial ExploitationRisk FactorsPrevalenceCommunity Settings