The results demonstrate the potential importance of parental cognitions in influencing parental stress levels. It is argued that these results have implications for clinical interventions for promoting parents' coping strategies in managing children with ID and behavioural difficulties.

The manner in which parents adapt to the experience of caring for a child with an intellectual disability is generally thought to depend upon a range of variables typically conceptualized within multi-dimensional models. This review briefly describes three such models that share significant common features, incorporating child variables, environmental characteristics, and parental cognitive processes as contributors to parental coping styles or parenting stress. The effects of child and environmental characteristics on parenting stress and coping in parents of children with disabilities have been well documented. It is argued, however, that some aspects of cognitive processes in parents of these children have received less attention from researchers. In particular, there has been a large amount of research into parenting self-esteem, parental attributions, and parental locus of control with parents of other groups of children. This research is reviewed, and it is argued that further research into similar cognitions in parents of children with intellectual disabilities is warranted. Finally, the potential clinical implications of such research are examined in relation to behavioural interventions for children's behavioural difficulties. It is suggested that parental cognitions may influence the acceptability of such interventions and also be associated with their effectiveness.

Aim:Many educational and clinical psychologists are involved in autism diagnosis services, yet there is no clarity about the nature of the disorder underlying what they believe they are diagnosing. This paper therefore aims to examine some typical assumptions about the implications of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis.Rationale:This conceptual review questions whether ASD represents a distinct kind of disorder, in view of the substantial changes in definitions of autism over the past 50 years. This is addressed from the perspective of philosophy of science by considering whether ASD constitutes a natural kind with explanatory and predictive value.Findings:Research studies have failed to identify any distinct cognitive abnormality which uniquely characterises autism. There are no interventions specifically for people with an ASD diagnosis which, when available, are not also effective for those with other conditions. Outcomes for those with the diagnosis may be more varied than hitherto supposed and may depend on other variables apart from the diagnosis itself.Limitations:It is impossible to cover all relevant research for a fully comprehensive overview of the field in a paper of this length. However, most of the research and review papers cited are of recent date.Conclusions:It is difficult to see ASD as a distinct natural kind of psychological disorder. The outlook for those diagnosed is often hard to predict. Psychologists therefore need to be cautious about the manner in which they communicate diagnoses to avoid overly gloomy prognostications.

A psychiatric diagnosis can have a range of effects on the person receiving it. Some welcome the diagnosis, seeing it as an explanation for their distress, while others perceive it as an unwelcome medicalised label impinging negatively on their sense of themselves as rational agents. I focus on how the diagnosis affects the latter group, and in particular how it may impact on their self-narratives. I therefore outline some key themes in narrative theory which have been explored in various ways by philosophers, though to a lesser extent by psychologists. These theorists emphasise the importance of self-narratives in human psychology. I argue that those receiving a psychiatric diagnosis may be vulnerable to experiences of epistemic injustice, as described by Miranda Fricker. This includes what Fricker describes as hermeneutical injustice, where individuals lack the ability to understand their experiences or difficulties in ways that make sense to them. The medicalisation implicit in psychiatric diagnoses conveys a particular kind of narrative which may conflict with the recipient’s previous self-narratives. When such effects occur, they may reduce the recipient’s sense of agency and induce feelings of hopelessness about recovery, which may then limit the prospect of a positive outcome for the person concerned. A greater use of formulation could mitigate those effects.

No abstract