Diaphragmatic breathing as treatment for escape‐maintained aggression

Abstract

Coping skills, such as diaphragmatic breathing, are commonly recommended to help individuals work through challenging situations. We evaluated diaphragmatic breathing as treatment for aggression of three individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or Angelman syndrome. Functional analysis results demonstrated that each participant engaged in aggression maintained by social-negative reinforcement. Diaphragmatic breathing treatment without extinction was conducted in a work context and involved prompting diaphragmatic breathing contingent on precursors to aggression; treatment was effective in reducing the rate of aggression for one of three participants. For the two other participants, other reinforcement-based interventions (differential reinforcement of other behavior or functional communication training with extinction) were necessary to decrease aggression.

Exploring the added value of virtual reality biofeedback game DEEP in forensic psychiatric inpatient care—A qualitative study

“…To illustrate, interventions based on heart rate (variability) biofeedback can decrease anger in adolescents and improve emotion-regulation in offenders, which is an often-re-occurring treatment goal for forensic psychiatric patients (Savard, 2017;Gray et al, 2019). Moreover, diaphragmatic breathing has shown to be supportive in reducing aggressive behavior in various psychiatric patient groups, by modulating the heart rate and specific neural circuits that are involved in emotion regulation (Gillespie et al, 2012;Phillips et al, 2019). Regarding the effectiveness of DEEP: recent studies have also shown DEEP to be effective in reducing stress and anxiety in students and in showing less disruptive behavior in adolescents with behavioral problems (Van Rooij et al, 2016;Bossenbroek et al, 2020).…”