National Elder Abuse Incidence Study

Maltreatment of older people, within the community and inside institutions of various kinds, has been an enduring feature of our social history. At worst, this has taken the form of outright persecution of those who, lacking financial and other resources, find themselves thrown upon the mercy of their fellow citizens. At another level, maltreatment has been expressed in the form of intergenerational conflict: through the elder’s control over property and the blockage of the aspirations of younger kin (Stearns, 1986); through the pressures faced by unmarried children caring for aged parents (Bardwell, 1926); or through the crisis generated by economic recession, as families struggle with the pressures of meeting the needs of older as well as younger generations (Murphy, 1931). Yet the meanings attached to, and the concerns expressed about, mistreatment have varied greatly from generation to generation. It has only been over the last two decades that attempts have been made to translate a generalized concern about the suffering of the old into more precisely defined concepts such as abuse and neglect (Phillipson, 1997). The transition has, however, been protracted, raising complex issues about the way in which social relationships in later life are defined and the reasons given for focusing on some problems to the exclusion of others. Added to this has been the lack of systematic data about the nature of abuse, with studies varying widely with respect to the reliability of the data collected. In this regard, the National Elder Abuse Incidence Study (NEAIS) provides a major step forward and represents a landmark in research in the field of elder abuse. The report itself is a model of its kind, taking the reader step-by-step