Most of the early work on abuse of the elderly was limited to domestic settings and carried out in developed countries. In seeking explanations for elder abuse, researchers drew from the literature in the fields of psychology, sociology, gerontology and the study of family violence. To accommodate the complexity of elder abuse and the many factors associated with it, researchers have turned to the ecological model, which was first applied to the study of child abuse and neglect (24) and has been applied more recently to elder abuse (25, 26). The ecological model can take into account the interactions that take place across a number of systems. As described in Chapter 1, the.
