Staff perceptions of sadness among people with mental handicaps

This study investigated the use of an informant behaviour checklist to examine carestaff perceptions of sadness among a hospital population of people with mental handicaps. Using Cohen's kappa statistic there were only three checklist items which had acceptable levels of inter-rater agreement (physical aggression, crying and verbal abuse) with no significant variation in the incidence of those behaviours according to the severity of mental handicap. The findings suggest that future research might attend to concepts of sadness among carestaff and their ability to identify sad emotional states in a reliable manner.