Factors Associated With Restraint Application in Children and Adolescents With Intellectual and Developmental...

Area of Science:

• Behavior Analysis
• Developmental Disabilities
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Emergency physical restraints are prevalent in various service sectors.
• Existing research on physical restraints in youth often overlooks intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
• Current literature frequently focuses on inpatient psychiatric populations, not outpatient IDD populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze participant and restraint application characteristics in children with IDD requiring emergency physical restraints.
• To investigate if challenging behavior severity predicts the time to restraint application.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of outpatient data from 12 children and adolescents with IDD.
• Descriptive statistics to report participant and restraint characteristics.
• Regression analysis to determine predictors of restraint latency.

Main Results:

• Most participants had moderate to high challenging behavior severity and were on polypharmacy.
• The average restraint rate was 9.11 per 100 service hours, with most participants calm during application.
• Challenging behavior severity significantly predicted the latency to the first restraint application.

Conclusions:

• Challenging behavior severity is a key factor influencing the timing of emergency physical restraint application in youth with IDD.
• Findings highlight the need for tailored interventions considering behavior severity and polypharmacy in this population.
• Further research is needed to explore clinical implications and refine restraint protocols.