Research suggests that survivors of interpersonal violence have an increasing experience of bodily symptoms. A sample of 4, community-dwelling persons aged 60—84 years Lifetime abuse psychological, physical, sexual, financial and injury was assessed on the basis of the UK study of elder abuse and the Conflict Tactics Scale-2, while somatic symptoms were assessed by the Giessen Complaint List short version.
Women reported somatic symptoms more frequently than men. Multiple regression analyses revealed that lifetime exposure to psychological abuse was associated with higher levels of somatic symptoms among both women and men, while experiencing lifetime sexual abuse was associated with somatic symptoms only among older women, after adjusting for other demographic and socio-economic variables. Country of residence, older age, and low socio-economic status were other independent factors contributing to a higher level of somatic symptoms.
The positive association between the experience of abuse during lifetime and the reporting of higher levels of somatic symptoms, in particular among older women, seems to suggest that such complaints in later life might also be related to the experience of mistreatment and not only to ageing and related diseases.
Violence prevention throughout lifetime could help to prevent somatic symptoms in later life. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The anonymized, minimal underlying dataset are available upon request due to potentially identifying information. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. In Europe, there is an increased concern about abuse and mistreatment against older persons. According to a recent systematic review and meta-analysis [ 1 ], the pooled prevalence rate for the overall elder abuse in the past year, against people living in community settings, is Studies from some countries e.
