Detection and prevalence of abuse of older males: perspectives from family practice.
Family doctors' frequent contact with seniors put them in reasonable positions to detect elder abuse and initiate referral to adult protective services. Since doctor reporting is low, however, this paper explores whether the gender of patient and/or doctor impacts on identification of elder mistreatment, or creates differential detection of one gender over the other. Use of the validated Elder Abuse Suspicion Index (EASI), and a structured social work evaluation, is described to provide some gender-based data from Canadian family practice. Specifically, while the prevalence of elder abuse is estimated to range from 12.0% to 13.3%, the specific prevalence was found for females to be 13.6% to 15.2% and for males 9.1% to 9.7%.
Yaffe
Mark J
MJ
McGill University, Department of Family Medicine and St. Mary's Hospital, 3830 Lacombe Ave, Montreal, QC, Canada H3T 1M5. mark.yaffe@mcgill.ca
Weiss
Deborah
D
Wolfson
Christina
C
Lithwick
Maxine
M
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004552:Elder Abuse / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005194:Family Practice / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008487:Medical History Taking / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D015995:Prevalence; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012737:Sex Factors