Background: Dementia in the elderly is associated with a greater risk of being subjected to abuse. More than half of those in Japan who abuse elderly relatives with dementia do not realize that their behavior corresponds to abuse.

Objective: This study sought to examine the effect of the presence of dementia in the elderly on attitudes toward abuse.

Methods: The subjects of this study were 135 people aged between 18 and 86 who were not taking care of elderly relatives at the time of the survey. The subjects were asked to rate how abusive they thought each of 12 behaviors listed in a questionnaire was in regard to three categories of elderly: (1) elderly with dementia who require care (DC); (2) elderly without dementia who require care (NC); and (3) elderly without dementia who do not require care (NN).

Results: The results of ANOVAs showed that the attitude of the subjects was associated with experience of caregiving, category of elderly, and type of abuse. The results of Bonferroni's tests indicated that the behaviors, especially those behaviors that included physical, psychological, and economic abuse, toward the DC category were not considered to be as abusive as those toward either the NC category or NN category.

Conclusions: This study suggests that people might rate abusive behavior as being less abusive when the person being cared for has dementia.