Elder Abuse

ABSTRACT

Just these days elder abuse receives increasing social attention even though Korea already entered the ageing society with the steep increase of elderly population and this causes many social problems including elderly suicides. We need to develop methods to deal with these severe social problems, but, owing to lack of reliable data and studies, it is even difficult to document actual conditions of elder maltreatment. In a Korean nationwide epidemiological study conducted in 2007, the prevalence rate of elder abuse for last one year was 6.0%. Emotional abuse showed the highest prevalence (5.2%), and followed by neglect (2.3%), physical abuse (0.2%). The purpose of this study is to investigate the current prevalence and condition of elder maltreatment and provide the information about concept, types, risk factors and intervention of elder maltreatment.