A survey of self-neglect in patients living in the community

Self-neglect is a familiar concept to all community nurses. Nevertheless there have; been few empirical studies undertaken in this area over the last 30 years. The study of self-neglect has been hampered by inadequate conceptualization and a lack of theoretical frameworks;. This article reports a study of patients who did and did not self-neglect, drawn from district nursing caseloads. Patients with self-neglect had lower levels of operable self-care agency than patients in a comparison group. Only self-neglecting patients had the nursing diagnoses 'ineffective management of therapy' and 'non-compliance'.