There is very little available in the literature that focuses on the perspectives of families caring for someone with severe or profound learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. This ethnographic study aimed to improve understanding of the experiences and perspectives of families, in particular mothers, of young people with these complex needs. The researcher carried out [read the full story…]
With a between-subjects design and gender as its one independent variable, the researchers in this study used the Novaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory to compare the score of 12 females and 23 males within a forensic psychiatric service for patients with learning disabilities. The team found there were significant differences between scores which suggested [read the full story…]
This American study set out to look at the use of physical restraint in services for people with learning disabilities. The researchers looked at data on the incidence and implementation of physical restraint for 448 adults with learning disabilities in community-based day services and shared supported housing. They found that physical restraint was used exclusively [read the full story…]
The authors of this study set out to evaluate behavioural and medication-based interventions in the treatment of challenging behaviour in people learning disabilities, both separately and in combination. They suggest that researchers might need to adapt the methods they have traditionally used to evaluate drug interventions for individuals without disabilities when working with people with [read the full story…]
This study set out to look at associations between psychiatric disorders in people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviours. The study used a large sample and controlled for sex, age, autism and degree of learning disability. The researchers used data from 47% of all people with learning disabilities who were known to and receiving services [read the full story…]
Antipsychotics are widely used for the management of behavioural problems in people with learning disability, despite concerns about the lack of a good evidence base for this practice (see Cochrane review) The researchers in this study set out to audit clinical practice of prescribing anti-psychotics against standards of good practice. The authors collected data from [read the full story…]
Physical factors can be a cause of some challenging behaviours in people with learning disabilities and this systematic review set out to determine what these conditions might be. The search covered the period 1990 and 2008and identified 45 studies. These looked at general medical conditions, motor impairment, epilepsy, sensory impairment, gastrointestinal disease, sleep disorders, dementia [read the full story…]
Antipsychotic medication is widely used to treat behavioural problems in people with learning disabilities. A Cochrane review of the use of these medications for this purpose found very few randomised controlled trials (a method of clinical research in which people are allocated at random to receive a clinical intervention, a placebo, or no intervention at [read the full story…]
Researchers in the south east of England set out to look at the experiences of violence at work in of staff in community learning disability teams. Following a brief survey sent to six such teams, the experiences were explored further in a series of in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of respondents. The survey suggested that [read the full story…]
This review of existing research looked at behavioural and psychiatric problems in people with Prader-Willi syndrome, a complex genetic disorder. The review found hyperphagia (compulsively overeating over a long period) compulsions/repetitive behaviour, self-injury (especially skin-picking), and aggressive behaviours to be common in people with Prader–Willi syndrome. The most frequently found psychiatric disorders were psychotic, affective, [read the full story…]
