Severe Challenging Behavior and Trauma: Considering Unique Needs of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities becomes clinically important the moment a team has to turn good intentions into reliable action inside adult services and community participation. In Severe Challenging Behavior and Trauma: Considering Unique Needs of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities, for this course, the practical stakes show up in skills that remain meaningful when school supports disappear and adult expectations change, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Missouri Association for Behavior Analysis
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Join Free →Adults with intellectual disabilities are one of the most marginalized groups in the world. Among those with severe or profound intellectual disabilities, there is a high rate of severe challenging behavior and experiencing trauma. One of the factors that contributes to this marginalization is the lack of assessments and treatments specific to this population. Recent advancements in functional assessment methods have not addressed the unique needs or challenges of adults with intellectual disabilities, particularly those with decades of severe challenging behavior and limited skill development. This is particularly evident in the recent discussions about the consideration of trauma in applied behavior analysis. Specifically, there has been limited analysis and discussion of basic processes that underline trauma. Additionally, several recommendations in the scholarly literature are difficult to implement with adults with intellectual disabilities. In this talk, I will first describe the development and evaluation of a decision-making model for efficient functional assessment with adults with intellectual disabilities. Next, I will describe how this model has led to robust treatments, focused on the unique needs of adults and the promotion of long-term, generalized behavior change, and how treatment disruptions could signal the influence of trauma. I will then describe a potential basic process that underlies trauma, learned helplessness. Finally, I will describe several empirical methods for identifying the specific impact of trauma on both the adaptive behavior and challenging behavior of adults with intellectual disabilities. This will highlight the critical importance of precise identification for individualized, effective, and generalized skill acquisition and treatment of severe challenging behavior.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1.5 | General |
Joseph Dracobly received his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Italian Studies from Gonzaga University in 2005. In 2009, he received his M.S. in Behavior Analysis from the University of North Texas under the supervision of Dr. Richard Smith. In 2014, his received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Psychology from the University of Kansas under the supervision of Dr. Claudia Dozier. After graduating from the University of Kansas, from 2014-2018, he was an Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at Eastern Connecticut State University.In August 2018, Dr. Dracobly joined the faculty in the Department of Behavior Analysis at the University of North Texas as an Assistant Professor. He is currently a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and a Licensed Behavior Analysis in the state of Texas. Dr. Dracobly supervises the Behavior Analysis Resource Center (BARC), a clinical and research project at the Denton State Supported Living Center. BARC provides students the opportunity to develop clinical skills within the context of interdisciplinary service delivery and conduct research on severe behavior disorders and trauma. Dr. Dracobly is also the faculty supervisor of the Creativity and Problem Solving (CaPS) lab. The CaPS lab conducts translational and applied research focused on response variability and its relation to more complex behavioral repertoires.Dr. Dracobly's work has been published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Analysis in Practice, Learning and Motivation, Perspectives on Behavior Science, and Behavioral Interventions. He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual disabilities, on the editorial board of The Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, and he regularly serves as a guest reviewer for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, the European Journal of Behavior Analysis, and the Education and Treatment of Children.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
280 research articles with practitioner takeaways
279 research articles with practitioner takeaways
252 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.