By Liz Carey
Experts say elder abuse in rural communities is a problem, but finding ways to solve it means clarifying how states define it and who should report it.
One in 10 older adults across the country reported experiencing some form of abuse during the previous year, according to a recent report from the National Center on Elder Abuse. For every single report of abuse, there are 24 incidents that may go unreported, the study claimed.
Although research on elder abuse in rural communities is limited, there is some evidence that older adults living in rural and remote areas are at greater risk of abuse because of their geographic isolation, lack of support services and poorer health.
“Elder abuse encompasses physical, emotional/psychological, sexual, and financial abuse, as well as neglect and self-neglect,” a 2024 study by the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center (RHRC) stated. “There is some evidence that older adults living in rural and remote areas are at greater risk for abuse than their urban-dwelling counterparts. Some unique characteristics of rural America, including less densely populated communities, more geographic isolation, and scarce resources may conceal abuse, thereby inhibiting prevention and intervention. Rural older adults also tend to have less education and fewer financial resources, and are in poorer health than their urban counterparts, possibly creating barriers to leaving abusive situations.”
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In order to protect older rural residents from elder abuse, the 2024 RHRC study argues, lawmakers first need to define what it is and who is responsible for reporting.
“These statutes also vary quite a bit by the age covered,” Alexis Swendener, a coauthor of the policy brief, said. “It’s not always the same. I saw anywhere from 50 to 70 (years old) defined as an older adult or senior adult. Some of the statutes were related to just any vulnerable adult, so a dependent adult would qualify and they weren’t age-defined. That was surprising to me that the protected population wasn’t necessarily based on age.”
The findings mean that policy makers need to be more clear on what elder abuse is and how state laws can and should protect older rural residents. Swendener said the differences make for difficult analysis and ineffective policymaking.
“As I was sifting through these statutes […] I was thinking about how the differences make it pretty difficult for us to know overall what the scope of the problem is,” she said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
“These state statutes – it’s not necessarily elder abuse that they’re talking about … and if we collected data on it, it’s not consistently about just older adults – some of the laws are about vulnerable adults or dependent adults. Some of them have age defined in them and some of them don’t.”
The RHRC study initially aimed to find the differences between rural and urban elder abuse by looking at statistics of elder abuse across the country. What the researchers found was differences in every area, from who is mandated to report elder abuse to how elder abuse is defined.
The mere makeup of rural communities and their people may also affect how many victims of rural elder abuse there are reported, said Nels Holmgren, director of Aging and Adult Services in Utah. Speaking about what he sees in Utah, he noted that there may be more people in urban areas to report elder abuse, and there may be more older people in rural Utah who don’t want anyone to know they are being abused.
“I think, in some of our urban settings, there are more reporters, there are more people sometimes that have eyes on these situations. In our rural areas, there are simply fewer people to do that investigation,” Holmgren said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “Certainly in rural communities, there’s a real sense of rugged independence, and people are less likely to ask for help because partly they value their independence and do things on their own.”
Rural elder abuse and neglect are relatively high in rural areas, and screening and prevention are needed to protect against elder abuse, according to the National Institutes of Health. In a 2022 study of more than 10,000 rural older adults, an estimated 7 percent reported physical abuse, 5 percent reported financial abuse, 17 percent reported psychological and emotional abuse and 26 percent reported neglect.
Swendener said her study looked at six different kinds of elder abuse — emotional abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and self-neglect. The study found that 72.2 percent of the most rural states, 55.6 percent of the somewhat rural states, and 66.7 percent of the least rural states clearly covered all six abuse types in their state statutes. Sexual abuse and self-neglect were the two areas of elder abuse least likely to be clearly mentioned, she said.
While about one in 10 older adults experiences some form of elder abuse nationwide, research on elder abuse in rural communities remains limited, according to researchers at the Rural Health Research Center at the University of Minnesota.
“The most common thing that we’re dealing with is self-neglect, but often if we can get to the people of self-neglect, those issues are often easier to resolve … and the person is usually in a better position afterward,” Holmgren said. “It’s disconcerting, the growth in financial exploitation. We’re also dealing with individuals closer to the person who are using the person’s funds inappropriately. I believe somewhere north of half of our cases are self-neglect.”
In July 2024, an elderly woman in Medina County, Ohio, was swindled out of $100,000. Marilyn Glauner, 81, said she got a phone call from someone who said they were with Publisher’s Clearinghouse and that she had won $8 million and a car. By the end of the phone call, she’d sent off three cashier’s checks totaling $100,000 and $3,000 in gift cards.
When her children found out that the money was missing, one of her sons called the police to help. Officials were able to stop two of the checks, but one of the checks had already been cashed.
Holmgren said one of the key elements in protecting rural seniors from elder abuse is reporting. The increased isolation some rural seniors experience can make that difficult. While senior services can get to older adults if they know there is a need, finding out that the adult needs help is the first step, he said.
”It’s harder for people that may not be on the radar of those agencies,” he said. “That’s the trickier part, especially in a rural area. There’s just fewer opportunities to interact. Once they know who they are and where they are and what they need, then I think (support agencies) are able to very effectively connect people.”
By defining the problem and how it is addressed, policy makers could increase awareness of elder abuse in rural communities and combat it at its source, Swendener said.
“Making folks aware of how to prevent elder abuse and keeping folks in contact with each other by increasing social support and reducing social isolation, especially for folks in rural areas, is a good start to addressing the problem,” she said.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post Study: To better protect elderly rural adults, laws need to be updated appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
