Accessible Summary We wanted to know what care staff felt about difficult behaviour displayed by people with autism, learning disabilities or Down syndrome. We asked many care staff who worked with people with disabilities to watch a video. The video was about a made up lady called Sophie. Sometimes Sophie was described as having autism, other times as having learning disabilities and sometimes as having Down syndrome. After staff members watched the video, we asked them how they felt about Sophie's difficult behaviour. Staff viewed Sophie's behaviour better when she was described as having autism and worst when she was described as having learning disabilities. We believe that staff should view all people equally regardless of the way they are described. We have used the information about this study to make recommendations about staff training. Abstract Background: This study investigated whether care staff's causal attributions and emotional reactions to the challenging behaviour displayed by service users were influenced by the service user's diagnostic label. Materials and Method: One hundred and twenty care staff were randomly allocated to one of three conditions. Participants viewed a video of a senior staff member describing a service user, varying only in diagnostic label (autism, learning disability or Down syndrome). Participants then rated their endorsement of possible causes and emotional reactions to challenging behaviour. Results: Participants in the Autism and Down syndrome groups made more use of biomedical causes and less use of learned behaviour as an explanation for challenging behaviour than those in the Learning Disabilities group. Those in the former groups reported more positive and fewer negative emotions than those in the Learning Disabilities group. Conclusions: The way staff viewed people with learning disabilities was affected by their diagnostic label. Implications for further research and training have been discussed.
Accessible summary• We want to know what people with learning disabilities think about working with clinical psychologists. • We interviewed eight people with learning disabilities about their experience of seeing a clinical psychologist. • We summarised all the information we got from the interviews to share it with other professionals and with service users. • We used the information to make our psychology service more helpful for our service users. • We want to include the views of people with learning disabilities in planning our psychology service. SummaryClinical psychologists are well placed to work with people with learning disabilities given the high prevalence of psychiatric disorders in this population and the specialist training undertaken by psychologists. The evidence for psychological interventions in learning disabilities is scarce compared to the evidence for mainstream psychological interventions. This is because of the methodological issues in conducting quantitative research. A way forward to add to the evidence is to use qualitative methods to investigate the views of people with learning disabilities. The aim of the present study was to explore the views of eight people with learning disabilities about their experiences of working with clinical psychologists. Thematic analysis revealed three themes from the narratives: the therapeutic relationship, change and the expectations/perceptions of participants about clinical psychologists. When developing the quality of clinical psychology services for people with learning disabilities, providers should consider the views of people with learning disabilities in accordance with government policy. Limitations of the study are highlighted and further research suggested.
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