Elder Abuse Severity: A Critical but Understudied Dimension of Victimization for Clinicians and Researchers

Course overview

This study describes the variation in severity of elder emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect and identify risk factors associated with more severe forms of elder mistreatment (EM). This is a population-based study using random digit-dial sampling and telephone interviews with a representative sample (n = 4,156) of community-dwelling, cognitively intact older adults in New York State. The Conflict Tactics Scale and DUKE Older Americans Resources and Services scales were adapted to assess EM subtypes. For each EM subtype, severity was operationalized by summing the number of different mistreatment behaviors and the frequency of each behavior.