Verbal Elder Abuse

Paula Span, in her New Old Age Blog, wrote a December 2, 2013 post on Words That Wound, featuring a new study by Northeastern University researchers. According to the article the researchers told the elders to think about the primary caregiver and “'[h]ow often in the past year did someone insult or swear at you?” and “How often did someone stomp out of the room or house?” and “How often did someone threaten to hit or throw something at you?’”

The article notes the difficulty of putting findings such as these in context because of a lack of uniform definitions as well as research methods.

What makes the Northeastern study worth paying attention to, though, is the impact that any level of mistreatment can have. The group that said a caregiver had yelled, sworn or threatened at least once in the past year had significantly lower social functioning and poorer mental health than the group reporting no verbal mistreatment. Previous studies have also found relationships between verbal mistreatment and seniors’ health and well-being.

The researchers made a presentation regarding their findings at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.