Statute Definitions of Elder Abuse

Abstract

Differences in elder abuse definitions hinder the comparison of research and state elder abuse data (Jogerst, Daly, Brinig et al., in press). The purposes of this paper are to describe and summarize the elder abuse definitions in the state statutes and present current definitions used in practice, education, and research. The definitions of elder abuse for the 50 state and District of Columbia laws addressing protective services for domestic elder abuse were analyzed. No one single term describing elder abuse was used uniformly across all statutes. “Abandonment,” “mental anguish,” “exploitation,” “neglect,” “self-neglect,” and “sexual abuse” were predominant terms used in the statutes. It is unlikely that legislation for the 50 states and District of Columbia would be implemented to change the statutes definitions of elder abuse but it is possible to develop a list of definitions that can be used as model definitions for researchers, practitioners, and for future policy changes.