Over one million people across Europe, North America and Australasia have a severe intellectual disability and also show additional problematic or challenging behaviours. These include such behaviours as aggression, self-injury, destructiveness, overactivity, inappropriate social or sexual conduct, bizarre mannerisms and the eating of inappropriate objects. The combination of intellectual and behavioural disabilities can blight the lives of those affected and place the health, safety and welfare of those who care for them in jeopardy. They also represent a significant challenge to agencies involved in the purchase or provision of educational, health and welfare services.

Over the past three decades, behavioural psychology has been particularly influential in shaping the way we think about challenging behaviours. Behaviourally based approaches to intervention have been shown to be effective in bringing about rapid and socially significant reductions in challenging behaviour. They have also, however, attracted considerable controversy.

The goals of this book are twofold: first and foremost, to provide a relatively concise introduction to the area; secondly, to draw attention to some of the more recent developments in the area of applied behaviour analysis and related fields which will need to be incorporated into practice if behavioural approaches are to continue to contribute to the struggle to help people with severe disabilities overcome their challenging behaviours and become more fully participating members of our communities.

This is not, however, a ‘how-to-do-it’ book. Rather, it will focus on describing those developments in basic and applied research which are likely to have important implications for practice.