Study of the Effect of Social Work Intervention on the Elderly Abuse Reduction

Increasing the prevalence of elder abuse has become a health issue in developing countries¡ including Iran. The purpose of this investigation was the study of the effect of social work intervention with a cognitive behavioral approach on the reduction of the elderly abuse experimentation.
Methods & Materials: Twenty-nine elders participated in this study in the intervention (n=14) and control (n=15) groups. In a randomized clinical trial¡ elder persons and their families who met inclusion criteria were recruited from August 2014 to January 2015. They were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Intervention group received a 5-session family based cognitive-behavioral social work (FBCBSW) intervention. The domestic elder abuse questionnaire was administered to evaluate the elder abuse at baseline¡ immediate post-intervention¡ and at 30 day post-intervention.Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Wilcoxon test were used for data analysis.
All participants reported at least one type of abuse and almost 75.9% of them reported that their children were main abusers. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that FBCBSW was successful in reducing elder abuse (total score). Wilcoxon test illustrated significant reduction in subscales of neglect care (P=0.01)¡ psychological abuse (P=0.003)¡ financial abuse (P=0.01)¡ loss of personal autonomy (P=0.005)¡ and financial neglect (P=0.02) in the intervention group while the intervention was not effective to reduce physical abuse (P=0.31).
The result of this study showed that FBCBSW is an effective intervention to decrease elder abuse. For future studies¡ implementing the same clinical trial with bigger sample size and 3 and 6 months follow up is recommended.