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The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey
BACKGROUND: Elder abuse is a growing public health question among policy makers and practitioners in many countries. Research findings usually indicate women as victims, whereas male elder abuse still remains under-detected and under-reported. We aimed to investigate the prevalence, severity and chr...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046244/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852624 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250039 |
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author | Melchiorre, Maria Gabriella Di Rosa, Mirko Macassa, Gloria Eslami, Bahareh Torres-Gonzales, Francisco Stankunas, Mindaugas Lindert, Jutta Ioannidi-Kapolou, Elisabeth Barros, Henrique Lamura, Giovanni J. F. Soares, Joaquim |
author_facet | Melchiorre, Maria Gabriella Di Rosa, Mirko Macassa, Gloria Eslami, Bahareh Torres-Gonzales, Francisco Stankunas, Mindaugas Lindert, Jutta Ioannidi-Kapolou, Elisabeth Barros, Henrique Lamura, Giovanni J. F. Soares, Joaquim |
author_sort | Melchiorre, Maria Gabriella |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Elder abuse is a growing public health question among policy makers and practitioners in many countries. Research findings usually indicate women as victims, whereas male elder abuse still remains under-detected and under-reported. We aimed to investigate the prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse (psychological, physical, physical injury, sexual, and financial) against older men, and to scrutinize factors (e.g. demographics) associated with high chronicity of any abuse. METHODS: Randomly selected older men (n = 1908) aged 60–84 years from seven European cities (Ancona, Athens, Granada, Kaunas, Stuttgart, Porto, Stockholm) were interviewed in 2009 via a cross-sectional study concerning abuse exposure during the past 12 months. RESULTS: Findings suggested that prevalence of abuse towards older men varied between 0.3% (sexual) and 20.3% (psychological), with severe acts between 0.2% (sexual) and 8.2% (psychological). On the whole, higher chronicity values were for injury, followed by psychological, financial, physical, and sexual abuse. Being from Sweden, experiencing anxiety and having a spouse/cohabitant/woman as perpetrator were associated with a greater “risk” for high chronicity of any abuse. For men, severity and chronicity of abuse were in some cases relatively high. CONCLUSIONS: Abuse towards older men, in the light of severe and repeated acts occurring, should be a source of concern for family, caring staff, social work practice and policy makers, in order to develop together adequate prevention and treatment strategies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8046244 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80462442021-04-21 The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey Melchiorre, Maria Gabriella Di Rosa, Mirko Macassa, Gloria Eslami, Bahareh Torres-Gonzales, Francisco Stankunas, Mindaugas Lindert, Jutta Ioannidi-Kapolou, Elisabeth Barros, Henrique Lamura, Giovanni J. F. Soares, Joaquim PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Elder abuse is a growing public health question among policy makers and practitioners in many countries. Research findings usually indicate women as victims, whereas male elder abuse still remains under-detected and under-reported. We aimed to investigate the prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse (psychological, physical, physical injury, sexual, and financial) against older men, and to scrutinize factors (e.g. demographics) associated with high chronicity of any abuse. METHODS: Randomly selected older men (n = 1908) aged 60–84 years from seven European cities (Ancona, Athens, Granada, Kaunas, Stuttgart, Porto, Stockholm) were interviewed in 2009 via a cross-sectional study concerning abuse exposure during the past 12 months. RESULTS: Findings suggested that prevalence of abuse towards older men varied between 0.3% (sexual) and 20.3% (psychological), with severe acts between 0.2% (sexual) and 8.2% (psychological). On the whole, higher chronicity values were for injury, followed by psychological, financial, physical, and sexual abuse. Being from Sweden, experiencing anxiety and having a spouse/cohabitant/woman as perpetrator were associated with a greater “risk” for high chronicity of any abuse. For men, severity and chronicity of abuse were in some cases relatively high. CONCLUSIONS: Abuse towards older men, in the light of severe and repeated acts occurring, should be a source of concern for family, caring staff, social work practice and policy makers, in order to develop together adequate prevention and treatment strategies. Public Library of Science 2021-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8046244/ /pubmed/33852624 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250039 Text en © 2021 Melchiorre et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Melchiorre, Maria Gabriella Di Rosa, Mirko Macassa, Gloria Eslami, Bahareh Torres-Gonzales, Francisco Stankunas, Mindaugas Lindert, Jutta Ioannidi-Kapolou, Elisabeth Barros, Henrique Lamura, Giovanni J. F. Soares, Joaquim The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title | The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title_full | The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title_fullStr | The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title_full_unstemmed | The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title_short | The prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: Insights from a multinational European survey |
title_sort | prevalence, severity and chronicity of abuse towards older men: insights from a multinational european survey |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8046244/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33852624 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250039 |
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