I have also been trying to find research on this subject, particularly related to group home and congregate care of the developmentally disabled and the mentally ill. I have not be able to find much.

I have two possibilities for the reason for this:

1 No-one has done the research

2 The term and concept has limited use outside the UK

Any thoughts, Martha?

I would have to assume that no one has done research on this, or I am searching the wrong terms for the US. I think in the US, as the move has been towards "community care" away from institutional care, that the powers that be do no want systematic research done on abuse in community care settings and therefore do not fund it. Another possibility is that because of HIPAA laws in the US and the decentralized and varying Developmental Disability and Mental Health delivery systems in the US (they differ from state to state) and that generally any research is done by asking questions of the systems that deliver services rather than those receiving services, that this issue has been minimized in the US.

Hi Martha

Thanks for replying to me on this. I do have the view that in the US this type of abuse would be dealt with through either corporate prosecutions against the organisation for neglect or abuse or alternatively that a class action on behalf of all the residents would address the matter. I believe the legislature in the US is probably more robust than in the UK abut I have no evidence for this opinion.

I am also partly of the view that, as a consequence of research with similar results to yours, this may be a euro-centric construct or even a UK-based construct.

Thanks again

I came across this article in a review of the literature on resident-to-resident aggression: Banerjee, A., Daly, T., Armstrong, P., Szebehely, M., Armstrong, H., & Lafrance, S. (2012).  Structural violence in long-term, residential care for older people: Comparing Canada and Scandinavia. Social Science & Medicine, 74(1), 390-398.

The focus is more on the staff than the residents, but the paper also reflects on how the poor quality of working conditions affects residents. I enjoyed the compare/contrast aspect. (Something I also benefited from when reading remarks about the UK & US in the preceding comments). 

Hi Marie

Thanks for this.  I'll take a look and see if it helps.

Dear Colleagues

Please find below the link for my latest article:

ResearchGate link: Article Prevalence of elder abuse: a narrative review

Journal link: Article Prevalence of elder abuse: a narrative review

Do let me know your feedback

Kind regards

Tiago