According to a recent UCT study, one in ten adults 65 and older reported having experienced abuse of some kind.
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IOL reports that the study by Roxanne Jacobs, a UCT PhD graduate, found that financial and emotional abuse were the most frequently reported forms of abuse.
‘We found that more than half of the acts of abuse that involved taking money, valuables or other things involved strangers,’ said Jacobs, adding that functional impairment in older adults was a significant predictor of self-reported elder abuse.
The study, titled Elder abuse in South Africa: measurement, prevalence and risk, revealed that family members who lived in the same home or not and non-family members with whom the elderly person had a personal relationship were the most common perpetrators of elder abuse.
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In order to help improve dementia care, treatment and support systems, Jacobs, a research officer at the Alan J. Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health, examined prevalence, predictors and risk estimates from a randomised household survey of 490 older adults and household informant dyads in Limpopo and the Western Cape.
‘There is very little research on elder abuse in South Africa, especially considering that our country has such high rates of violence and crime. There is virtually a complete absence of prevalence estimates, routine reporting or monitoring and surveillance available on issues relating to elder abuse. We assume it’s high, but we really don’t know and have critical gaps in evidence we need to fill to inform responses and priority setting,’ she said.
According to Jacobs’ research, 51.8% of carers tested positive for abuse risk, with 14.3% of those being at high risk.
Compared to carers of people without dementia, dementia carers were four times more likely to be at risk of abuse.
‘Carers of people living with dementia had various strategies to cope that included pacifying or evading challenging care interactions, feeling forced to be rough with an older person to get things done, and being a recipient of aggression and violence from their care-recipient themselves (aggressive behaviours from an older person living with dementia was a trigger for reciprocal violence and aggression) – increasing carer burden, stress and risk of abusing,’ Jacobs said.
She noted that high carer burden and neuropsychiatric symptoms in older adults were significant predictors of the carer being at risk of perpetrating abuse, suggesting that ‘we can minimise risk by supporting carers and people living with dementia in managing symptoms.’
‘Not all perpetrators of abuse are equal in culpability. While there are perpetrators that intentionally set out to exploit and harm, family carers of people living with dementia are more likely to need guidance and support in their care of a family member,’ she said.
Using a verification strategy in the screening of elder abuse to standardise perceptions of abuse at local and international levels, her supervisor, Associate Professor Margie Schneider, said the research has made a global contribution as one of the first studies to explore the relationship between dementia, functional impairment and elder abuse at a community level.
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