Attitudinal and Psychosocial Outcomes of a Fitness and Health Education Program on Adults With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Attitudinal and psychosocial outcomes of a fitness and health education program for adults with Down syndrome were examined. Participants were 53 adults with Down syndrome ages 30 years and older (29 females, 24 males, M age = 39.72 years) who were randomized into a training (n = 32) or control group (n = 21). The training group participated in a 12-week, 3 days per week, exercise and health education program. Outcome measures included attitudes towards exercise (cognitive-emotional barriers, outcomes expectations, and performance self-efficacy) and psychosocial well-being (community integration, depression, and life satisfaction). Compared to controls, the training group showed significant changes in attitudes towards exercise, including increased exercise self-efficacy, more positive expected outcomes, fewer cognitive-emotional barriers, improved life satisfaction, and marginally lower depression.

A cascade of disparities: Health and health care access for people with intellectual disabilities

“…Implementation of Healthy Lifestyles demonstrates that a relatively brief intervention with ongoing mentoring can support adults with mild ID to effectively change health behaviors [Drum et al, 2004]. A longer, more structured, and center-based health promotion intervention based on the transtheoretical model, Exercise and Nutrition Health Education Curriculum for Adults with Developmental Disabilities, [Heller et al, 2004b] also has documented its effectiveness through a control group study [Heller et al, 2004a]. A health promotion curriculum with demonstrated efficacy with people with physical disabilities, Living Well with a Disability [Ravesloot et al, 2005], has been successfully implemented with people with ID.…”

Motor activation in people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities in daily practice

“…Bartlo and Klein (2011) conducted a review into the effects of physical activity programs (balance training, aerobic training, and resistance training) for adults with intellectual disability and found evidence of an increase in balance and muscle strength (e.g., Carmeli, Kessel, Coleman, & Ayalon, 2002;Carmeli, Merrick, & Berner, 2004;Carmeli, Zinger-Vaknin, Morad, & Merrick, 2005), heart rate (e.g., Cluphf, O'Connor, & Vanin, 2001), functional mobility and gait (e.g., Podgorski, Kessler, Cacia, Peterson, & Henderson, 2004), and physical fitness (e.g., Rimmer, Heller, Wang, & Valerio, 2004). In addition to these positive effects in physical variables, evidence of positive effects in the domain of mental health was also found (Bartlo & Klein, 2011), such as a reduction in anxiety (Carmeli, Barak, Morad, & Kodesh, 2009), an increase in life satisfaction (Heller, Hsieh, & Rimmer, 2004), wellbeing (Carmeli et al, 2005), and quality of life (Carmeli et al, 2009;Heller et al, 2004). The participants in the studies included were, however, only adults of whom the majority had a mild to moderate intellectual disability.…”

Contact with Young Adults with Disability Led to a Positive Change in Attitudes toward Disability among Physiotherapy Students

“…It has sound measurement properties and established reliability and validity. 15 Attitudes toward barriers to exercise for adults with Down syndrome were measured using the 18-item Exercise Barriers Scale, 16 which includes individual items on motivational, knowledge, accessibility, cognitive, and social barriers scored on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 ¼ strongly disagree; 5 ¼ strongly agree). The scale developers identified two factors: cognitive-emotional barriers (internal consistency 0.85) and access barriers (internal consistency 0.77), respectively.…”