By Kathleen Wilber & Kelly Marnfeldt – Nature Agiing
Elder abuse has been recognized as a serious problem for decades. Yet rigorous studies are rare. Burnes and colleagues move the field forward by identifying how pervasive the problem is, the factors that increase and decease vulnerability, and how these factors change over a three-year period.
Burnes’s study uses a widely accepted definition of elder abuse as “an intentional act or lack of action by a person in a relationship involving an expectation of trust that causes harm or risk of harm to an older adult; it comprises five subtypes: financial abuse/exploitation,
