The abuse of elderly men... a revised version of a paper presented at the National Conference on Understanding and Combating Elder Abuse in Minority Populations, sponsored by the Archstone Foundation, American Public Welfare Association, and the National Center on Elder Abuse, Long Beach, CA, June, 1997.

Elderly men are an under-studied group of abuse victims. Although victimization surveys discriminate against all elderly, abused elderly men are especially invisible. This paper will discuss the high rates of self-abuse by older men and their high risk for abuse when they are lonely, living within inner cities, incarcerated, or gay. Since most men live with a spouse (or significant other), they have also been victims of domestic violence. It is suspected that institutionalized elderly men live in settings that are incongruent with their self-concepts and preferences. Finally, this paper discusses the special vulnerability of men from culturally-diverse backgrounds to elder abuse (resulting from male-dominated socialization and intergenerational conflict). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]