Elder Abuse and Neglect

Elder Abuse and Neglect Situated in Time

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, accounts of elder abuse and neglect exist early in human history. Ancient Greeks believed that parricide, or the murder of parents, was necessary to ensure that civilization continued. Fairy tales are replete with stories of young persons prevailing over wicked crones who cast evil spells (e.g., Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel). During colonial times in the United States, the treatment of elders was synonymous with the treatment of persons with mental illness. Elders, particularly those persons with mental illness or dementia, were forced to wander from town to town. Even the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s involved an element of elder mistreatment, as many of the people who were burned at the stake or who endured other torture were regarded by the community as “old” or “different.” The issue of elder abuse is mentioned little, however, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because elders were of little interest to society.

Research on elder abuse and neglect had its genesis in the late 1960s and was conducted to increase public awareness and development of relevant policy, clarify definitions, and provide assessment and screening tools and promising intervention practices. Although we know more about elder abuse and neglect than ever before, we still do not know its scope, which makes action related to the problem difficult to justify. The only U.S. prevalence study ever conducted remains that of Karl Pillemer and David Finkelhor, a study conducted in Boston in 1988 that did not include financial exploitation in its estimate of prevalence. That study suggested that only 1 in every 14 instances of elder abuse is reported, so there may be as many as five million cases of elder abuse occurring in a given year.

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