Knowing you: the interpersonal perceptions of staff towards aggressive individuals with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities in situations of conflict.
Staff often take client aggression personally and want to fight back—address these gut reactions in supervision or training will fail.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team talked with staff who work with adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. They asked how the staff feel and think when a client becomes aggressive.
The talks were one-on-one and open-ended. Staff told stories about real fights or yelling they had faced at work.
What they found
Half the staff said they take the aggression personally. Their first urge is to argue back or confront the client.
Strong feelings like anger, fear, and blame came up again and again. Staff saw the client as "doing it to me," not as a behavior to manage.
How this fits with other research
Lambrechts et al. (2009) later asked 318 staff the same questions with a survey. They found the same anger and fear, but showed these feelings do not always lead to real actions. The survey extends the 2005 story by adding numbers.
van Timmeren et al. (2016) built a full training model from the 2005 finding. Their large survey showed that when you boost staff self-efficacy and calm their emotions first, better client interactions follow. The 2016 paper is a direct successor.
Griffith et al. (2012) looked at the link between blame and controlling style. They found blame predicts a harsh style, yet emotions did not sit in the middle as expected. This partly contradicts the 2005 picture, but the difference is method: the 2012 survey tested theory, while 2005 captured raw experience.
Why it matters
If you supervise staff in ID services, start by asking how they feel after an incident. Teach calming and self-talk before you teach escape extinction or response blocking. When staff no longer see aggression as a personal attack, they can use the behavioral tools you give them.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
OBJECTIVES: Staff attributions concerning challenging behaviour have been found to play a role in determining their responses. The emphasis in the literature has been on staff beliefs about the challenging behaviour itself. However, staff are also likely to be responding to the person engaging in the behaviour. The aim of this study was to explore workers' perceptions of individuals who are frequently aggressive. DESIGN AND METHODS: Thirty-six staff members working with individuals presenting problems of frequent aggression participated in this study. They were interviewed about an incident of aggression involving the person they worked with. The semi-structured interview, based on a Rational Emotive Therapy format, aimed to tap into the emotions aroused in the staff members and interpersonal appraisals that they made at the time of the incident. The responses were content analyzed. RESULTS: The strength of the staff member's emotional reactions were noteworthy. Furthermore, approximately half of the staff members believed that the clients' aggression was directed at them personally. In turn, the majority of staff members described their clients in negative terms, and said that their first impulse had been to confront the clients. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that interpersonal perceptions may have a role in determining staff responses to individuals who behave aggressively. The clinical and theoretical implications of the findings were discussed, alongside directions for future research.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2005 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00693.x