Abuse is very big problem in the U.S. and it can be in all kinds of different forms, but one of the country’s major concerns is the elderly. According to recent estimates, elder abuse affects about 10% of the population older than 60, and what’s even more disconcerting is that fact that many of those cases go unreported.

A recent study conducted by finance website, WalletHub, ranked 2021’s States with the Best Elder-Abuse Protections. The good news, Wyoming was ranked in the top 10, landing at the #9 spot overall.

To determine which states fight the hardest against elder abuse, WalletHub compared all fifty states (and the District of Columbia), across 16 key metrics. Below is list of few of those metrics and how the Cowboy State ranked for each one:

• 17th – Elder-Abuse, Gross-Neglect & Exploitation Complaints*
• 6th – Total Expenditures on Elder-Abuse Prevention*
• 11th – Total Long-Term Care Ombudsman-Program Funding*
• 6th – Number of Eldercare Organizations & Services*
• 19th – Nursing-Homes Quality

*Rankings per resident aged 65+*

Considering some of the elderly horror stories that have made it to the different news outlets over the last few years, it’s nice to see Wyoming rising on this list. There is still a long way to go. Although we scored fairly high overall, the main metric that weighed us down was overall protection score, which was next to last (50th overall). Only Indiana scored lower than us on that key metric.

Apparently there is still work that needs to be done.