Prevalence Estimates
Approximately 4.6% of participants in our study reported experiencing some form of
emotional mistreatment in the past year. This contrasts with a prevalence of 9% for verbal
mistreatment reported by Laumann et al. in their recent survey of a nationally representative
sample of older adults.8 Thismay be at least partly explained by differences between our
definition of emotional mistreatment and their more liberal definition of verbal mistreatment.
The prevalence of physical mistreatment of older adults was1.6% in our data, which is 8 times the prevalence detected by Laumann et al.8 That study asked only1question, without contextually orienting preface statements. By contrast, our questions were more inclusive.