SHS 260 - Managing Difficult Behaviors

1. Identify common situations that are stressful and tend to bring forth or trigger undesirable and disruptive behavior from clients.
2. Identify characteristics of agency environments that interfere with appropriate service provision or outcomes.
3. Identify the most common clinical conditions that present challenges to staff members working with difficult clients.
4. Identify and describe common disruptive and potentially dangerous client behaviors encountered by human service workers who provide services to people with mental illness.
5. Describe the process of respectfully approaching and engaging a client who is upset or agitated and angry.
6. Identify the components and stages of emotional escalation and how to facilitate de-escalation in an agitated client.
7. Identify and describe possible interventions to reduce the frequency and severity of problematic client behaviors.
8. Describe proactive behavioral interventions based on standard presentations associated with select diagnoses, e.g., Alzheimer’s, dementia.
9. Identify the importance of and process for seeking and using consultation and clinical supervision in the work place.
10. Identify the personal and professional issues workers bring to the service environment that impact client response, both positively and negatively.
11. Identify how cultural variables affect the expression of distress and can impact the definition/perception of and response to difficult behaviors and consumers.