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

Abstract

Purpose of the study: To describe the variation in severity of elder emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect and identify factors associated with more severe forms of elder mistreatment (EM).

Design and methods: 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. Among older adults reporting some degree of mistreatment, ordinal or multinomial regression predicted severity of elder emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect.

Results: Distribution of EM severity was characterized by a negative/right skew. More severe emotional abuse was predicted by younger age, living with the perpetrator only, Hispanic background, and higher education. Increasing physical abuse severity was associated with younger age and living only with the perpetrator. Higher neglect severity was associated with functional impairment, younger age, living only with the perpetrator, lower income, and lower education. The presence of nonperpetrator others living in the home served a protective function against escalating mistreatment severity.

Implications: Extends existing EM risk factor research by operationalizing mistreatment phenomena along a continuum of severity. Findings enhance capacity to screen and report particularly vulnerable EM victims and inform targeted interventions to ameliorate the problem. Incorporation of severity into EM research/measurement reflects the clinical and phenomenological reality of the problem.

Keywords: Intensity; Mistreatment; Outcome measurement; Risk factors.

Figure 1.

Distribution of individual emotional abuse severity scores.

Figure 2.

Distribution of individual physical abuse severity scores.

Figure 3.

Distribution of individual neglect severity scores.