The Elders' Self-neglect: Research Status and Its Prospects

In recent years,Elderly self-neglect( ESN) has drawn the increasing attention from foreign researchers.This is mainly because ESN exhibits a significant positive correlation with mortality risk of the aged,and can be regarded as a predictable sign of mortality risk of the aged. Self neglect has the complex characteristics,and goes along with some psychological disorders and physical illnesses. Aiming at the new research topic,this article introduces and combs the research results of ESN,including characteristics,prevalence,hazard,diagnostic tools,influencing factors,theoretical models,intervention training,and social workers engaging in nursing the aged.Foreign researches of ESN offers the following benefits: the study contents become to more and more variety,the study range expands from family field to community and old-age care institutions fields. But there are some limitations in foreign ESN research field,such as conceptual narrowing,imperfection of theoretical dimensions construction,lacking width and depth of research content,singularity of research method,uniformity of diagnostic tools,insufficient prevention and intervention researches. Based on the above analysis, the future research development trends on psychological research field of ESN are given.