Parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) are more likely to experience serious psychological distress than parents of children with other developmental disabilities. To examine the impact of a range of factors on psychological wellbeing, interviews were undertaken with 68 mothers of children with ASDs to explore aspects of social support, mental health status and satisfaction with services. Findings indicated that over half of mothers screened positive for significant psychological distress and that this was associated with low levels of family support and with bringing up a child with higher levels of challenging behaviour. Mothers were more likely to report lower levels of support if they were a lone parent, were living in poor housing, or were the mother of a boy with ASD. The study also investigated areas of useful support and areas of unmet need, the latter including care breaks and advice needs.
Information collected in the context of a survey of all people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour in a single metropolitan borough indicated: (1) care staff report that a significant proportion of their colleagues usually display such emotional reactions as sadness, despair, anger, annoyance, fear and disgust to episodes of challenging behaviour; (2) respondents reported that the most significant sources of stress associated with caring for someone with challenging behaviour centred upon the 'daily grind' of caring, their difficulty in understanding the person's behaviour, the unpredictability of the behaviour and the apparent absence of an effective way forward; (3) care staff attribute the causes of the person's challenging behaviour to a diversity of internal psychological, broad environmental, behavioural and medical factors. These results are discussed in relation to their implications for staff-seeking and implementing external advice regarding the management of challenging behaviour.
Aspects of the topography and behavioural function underlying the challenging behaviours of all people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour (n = 70) in a defined geographical area were investigated. Results indicated that: (1) more severe challenging behaviours were shown by people with more severe disabilities; (2) a significant minority (44%) of people showed more than one form of challenging behaviour, this rising to 79% among people with more severe challenging behaviours; and (3) cross-sectional analyses revealed specific clusters of problematic, aggressive and self-injurious behaviours. Analysis of information derived from the Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS) indicated that (5) the most common functions of challenging behaviours appeared to be 'self-stimulation' (for self-injury, destructiveness and 'other' challenging behaviours) and securing the attention of carers (for aggressive behaviours). However, (6) parametric analyses failed to identify any consistent relationships between the form and function of an individual's challenging behaviour for aggressive, destructiveness and 'other' challenging behaviours, but (7) clients with self-injurious behaviour were significantly more likely to score highly on the 'self-stimulation' sub-scale than other sub-scales of the MAS. Finally, (8) significant consistency of behavioural functions across different forms of challenging behaviours shown by the same individual were found for the two combinations of aggressive-destructive behaviours and self-injury-'other' behaviours.
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