The American Center on Elder Abuse defines elder self-neglect as when an older adult is unable to perform basic self-care tasks daily due to a physical or mental impairment or diminished capacity.1 The issue typically presents itself in the form of an inability or unwillingness on the part of older individuals to provide themselves with the necessities of life, including adequate food, clothing, shelter, personal hygiene, medication, and safety precautions.2 Data from the US Adult Protective Services (APS) show that approximately 1.2 million cases of self-neglect are reported each year. Self-neglect is one of the most common forms of elder maltreatment, more than three times as common as physical abuse by caregivers.3 As the global trend of population aging increases, self-neglect has become a widespread and urgent public health problem that poses a serious threat to the health and safety of older persons,4 as it is likely to lead to malnutrition, frailty, medication irregularities, frequent hospital admissions and readmissions, and a higher risk of death.5 Data from a study with a one-year follow-up showed that self-neglecting older adults had a 5.82 times greater risk of all-cause mortality than the non-self-neglecting group.6 For idiosyncratic mortality, self-neglect is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, psychiatric, endocrine or metabolic, and tumor-related deaths.6 Another longitudinal study shows that the risk of death in the self-neglect group was twice as high as the risk of death in the non-self-neglect group at up to 13 years of follow-up by the researchers.7 Therefore, active screening and identification of factors affecting self-neglect in older adults and effective interventions are of great clinical value.

It is noteworthy that the results of the morbidity studies exhibited considerable discrepancies, which can be attributed to the use of disparate diagnostic criteria, assessment tools, and study populations. A study conducted on 3,159 community-dwelling Chinese American older adults in Chicago revealed a prevalence of self-neglect as high as 29.1 %.8 A Chinese study of 230 urban older adults with disabilities in Liaoning City revealed that a remarkably high 86 % exhibited self-neglect, while Ilhan9 observed a prevalence of 16.8 % among geriatric outpatients in Istanbul. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that the prevalence of self-neglect in older adults is likely to increase in conjunction with the continued growth of the aging population.10 Although most studies have analyzed the factors influencing self-neglect in older adults, the results have been inconsistent. For instance, the findings of one study indicated that being female was an independent protective factor against self-neglect in older individuals,11 whereas another study reported no significant correlation between gender and self-neglect in this demographic.4 One study observed that lower monthly incomes were associated with higher levels of self-neglect,12 while another study did not identify a significant association between monthly income and self-neglect.13

It would appear that there is no global consensus on the prevalence and influencing factors of self-neglect in older adults. Even though previous studies conducted systematic evaluations, no meta-analyses were performed,14 and only a limited number of English-language literature were included. Accordingly, the present study employed a systematic evaluation and meta-analysis research methodology, incorporating a selection of Chinese literature to facilitate a more comprehensive comparison of prevalence rates across different countries and to facilitate a more detailed analysis of potential influencing factors, which is of significant clinical importance.