Sleep, anxiety and challenging behaviour in children with intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorder.
Sleep and anxiety explain almost half of challenging behaviour in kids with ID or ASD—screen both before treating behaviour.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team sent surveys to parents of the children with intellectual disability or autism.
Parents rated their child’s sleep, anxiety and challenging behaviour.
Then the researchers used statistics to see how much sleep and anxiety predicted behaviour problems.
What they found
Sleep problems plus anxiety explained 42 percent of the differences in challenging behaviour.
That means nearly half of the behaviour you see could be driven by poor sleep and worry.
How this fits with other research
Einfeld et al. (1996) first showed that worse sleep went with more daytime behaviour issues, but they only looked at sleep.
Rzepecka et al. (2011) adds anxiety to the picture and shows the two together matter even more.
Chu et al. (2009) flips the lens: when kids sleep badly, their mothers also sleep badly and feel more anxious and depressed.
So fixing child sleep and anxiety may help both the child and the parent.
Why it matters
Before you write a behaviour plan, screen for sleep trouble and anxiety.
A simple parent checklist can flag these hidden drivers.
Treating sleep and worry first may cut challenging behaviour without extra behaviour intervention.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with an intellectual disability (ID) and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are known to suffer from significantly more sleep problems, anxiety and challenging behaviour (CB) than typically developing children (TD), yet little is known about the relationship between these factors in the child ID/ASD population. The study aim was to examine these relationships. We hypothesised that there would be significant positive correlations between the three factors and that sleep problems and anxiety would predict a significant amount of the variance in levels of CB. Parental measures of sleep problems, anxiety and CB were completed by 187 parents of children with ID and/or ASD. Significant positive associations were found between the three factors. A hierarchical multiple regression showed that medication, sleep problems and anxiety accounted for 42% of the variance in CB, with a large effect size. These findings suggest that these relationships should be considered during clinical practice, particularly in the case of CB interventions where sleep problems and/or anxiety are also present.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.05.034