Introduction and purpose: Elder abuse is a type of family violence that has recently been recognized as an extensive and growing social dilemma. Therefore, this study aims to identify elder abuse and its related factors within the families.

Materials and methods: This descriptive-cross sectional study used convenience sampling method to collect 251 elderly admitted to surgery and internal wards in Abadan city. Data were collected using “misbehavior to elderly in family” questionnaire via face to face interviews. Data analysis was done by SPSS software version 16 using descriptive statistics, Chi-square and Spearman correlation coefficients.

Findings: Findings from the current study showed that the highest type of abuse was care negligence (62.8%) followed by authority deprival (48.6%) psychological misbehavior (41%), financial abuse (36.7%), financial negligence (36.5% ), emotional negligence (36%), physical misbehavior (27.4%) and lastly ostracism (25.6 %). There was a significant relationship between care negligence and age. Psychological misbehavior was significantly associated with number of children. In addition, physical negligence was significantly associated with age and income.  However, there was a significant relationship between financial misbehavior and marriage status.  

Conclusions: Financial negligence and authority deprival are the most frequent type of misbehavior among elderly. Factors related to misbehavior in the elderly are age, marital status, number of children and income. Cooperation and participation of all related organizations are necessary to mitigate misbehavior with elderly within the family.