When an Elder is the Abuser

Professionals face additional barriers when faced with domestic violence in older people. There may be a lower imperative to enquire about domestic violence owing to assumptions that an older partner lacks the ability to cause physical harm and because of the absence of dependent children at home. The physical signs of domestic violence may be all too easily explained in older people as the result of frailty or a fall.
This open access article in the Medical Journal of Australia raises the concern that intimate partner violence in older couples is under-recognised. Domestic violence perpetrated by an older person requires clinicians and families to consider a different narrative to that predominant in elder abuse, one where the elder is the aggressor and may have been so for decades.

Wijeratne, C. & Reutens, S. (2016). When an elder is the abuser. Medical Journal of Australia, 205(6), 246-247.