Leaving school: a comparison of the worries held by adolescents with and without intellectual disabilities.
Teens with ID leave school carrying a heavier bag of worries and anxiety—screen early and teach coping before those fears shape adult life.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Erickson et al. (2016) asked 111 teens, half with intellectual disability (ID), what they worry about when school ends.
Each teen filled out the same worry checklist and an anxiety rating scale.
The team then compared the two groups to see who worried more and about what.
What they found
Teens with ID scored almost twice as high on total worries and on anxiety.
Their top fears were failing, being hurt, and losing family—worries that barely reached the typical teens’ radar.
How this fits with other research
Adams et al. (2025) followed autistic middle-schoolers and found child anxiety was the strongest predictor of later school refusal—showing these early worries can snowball into real absence.
Adams et al. (2020) surveyed younger autistic kids and saw that 96 % reported anxiety, yet only half felt adults noticed it at school—echoing R et al.’s call to look beyond behavior to internal distress.
Curryer et al. (2018) interviewed adults with ID who still felt family controlled big life choices; pairing this with R et al. suggests the school-leaving moment is when autonomy support should start.
Why it matters
You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Add a quick worry checklist to your transition plan. Ask the teen, not just the parent. When worries pop up, teach coping, self-advocacy, and choice-making right then—before anxiety hard-wires school avoidance.
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Join Free →Hand your student the 25-item Worry Questionnaire, note the top three fears, and slot an anxiety coping lesson into this week’s schedule.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Leaving school is an important time for adolescents, with increasing autonomy and developing adult identities. The present study sought to shed light on the content and emotional impact of worries amongst adolescents with and without intellectual disabilities (IDs) at this time of change. METHODS: Twenty-five adolescents with mild to moderate IDs and 27 adolescents without IDs, aged 15 to 18 years, took part in the study. Participants' worries were elicited using a structured interview. The levels of rumination and distress related to their most salient worries were also examined, along with their self-reported levels of anxiety. RESULTS: Content analysis of the interviews identified differences between the worries of the two groups of participants, with the adolescents with IDs expressing more general worries about failure and personal threat. Level of distress about worries was positively correlated with anxiety in both groups. The adolescents with IDs were significantly more anxious than their non-disabled peers. CONCLUSIONS: The differences between the groups' worries may be linked to differences in life experience and expectations. Consideration should be given to the specific worries of adolescents at the stage of leaving school. Doing so may allow solutions for their concerns to be identified, thus easing distress and leading to a less stressful transition.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12223