Physical mistreatment has been estimated to affect 2 million older persons each year and dramatically affects health outcomes. While researchers have attempted to examine risk factors for specific forms of abuse, many have been able to focus on only victim or perpetrator characteristics, or a limited number of psychosocial variables at any one time. Additionally, data on risk factors for subgroups such as persons with Alzheimer’s disease who may have heightened and/or unique risk profiles has also been limited. This paper examines risk for physical violence in caregiver/patient dyads who participated in the Aggression and Violence in Community-Based Alzheimer’s Families Grant. Data were collected via in-person interview and mailed survey and included demographics as well as measures of violence, physical and emotional health, and health behaviors. Logistic regression analysis indicated that caregivers providing care to elders with high levels of functional impairment or dementia symptoms, or who had alcohol problems, were more likely to use violence as a conflict resolution strategy, as were caregivers who were providing care to elders who used violence against them. By contrast, caregivers with high self-esteem were less likely to use violence as a conflict resolution strategy. Significant interaction effects were also noted. 1. Introduction While child abuse has been recognized and studied in the literature in depth, in the past 30 years researchers have begun to recognize the vulnerability of older adults to this issue and to increase the scope of abuse research to include the study of mistreatment in older persons. Mistreatment of older adults has been associated with age and gender of victim [1–6] with the oldest old and women found to be at significant risk. It has been linked to domestic violence theories with spouses often found to be the most likely perpetrators [7–9]. Heightened risk has been linked to increased stress, with caregivers financial [10–12] or emotional dependence [9, 13–15], marital discord, and financial difficulties [16] increasing the likelihood that abuse will happen. Caregiver and care receiver isolation have also been associated with elder mistreatment [15, 17–20], as have inadequate exchange issues such as violence by care recipients [21–27] and poor caregiver/care receiver relationships [22, 26, 28–30]. Caregiver psychopathology such as substance abuse, depression [9, 31–36], and caregiver emotional problems [29, 31, 36, 37] have also been linked [36, 38, 39]. Care receiver cognitive impairment has recently received
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