Identification of elder abuse risk factors in community settings

In this descriptive study through questionnaires was analysed the relationship between elder abuse risk and possible older abuse predictor factors belonging to caregiver (stress, burden, and anger), to care-receiver (problematic behaviours and functional state) to caregiving situation (received help and quality of the relationship). Moreover, it was assessed whether each group of variables had a significant role in the elder abuse risk explanation with a sample of 45 family caregivers of older persons with dementia. The results pointed out that elder abuse risk increased as much as worse was quality of the relationship, received less help and showed greater anger expression, burden and stress and had more problematic behaviours. Furthermore, each group of introduced variables (caregiver, older person and caregiving situation) significantly improved the explanatory power of elder abuse risk explaining a 63% of variance. The caregiver dimension was the one had more explanatory weight. These results let point out that risk elder abuse is the combination of nature different factors, despite the caregiver dimension was the one had greater weight.