Elder Abuse

So far, prevalence studies have been restricted to the developed world. Five community-based prevalence surveys conducted in five countries using different methods of data collection reported rates that ranged between 4 to 6 percent of the older population although the proportion of abuse types among the five varied. Two were national in scope, Canada and the UK (Podnieks 1992; Ogg and Bennett 1992); a third encompassed the retired population of a small Finnish town (Kivelä et al. 1992), and the other two utilized representative samples of cities in the United States (Boston) (Pillemer and Finkelhor 1988) and the Netherlands (Amsterdam) (Comijs et al. 1998). In the U.S. and Canadian studies, men and women were apt to be mistreated equally; in the Finnish and Dutch surveys, female victims outnumbered males. A later national Canadian survey on family violence reported older men (9%) were more likely than older women (6%) to report being victims of emotional or financial abuse (Bunge and Locke 2000). No systematic collection of abuse statistics or prevalence surveys has been conducted in the developing world but crime records, journalistic reports, social welfare records, and small scale studies contain evidence that mistreatment of elders is occurring.