Objectives: To identify the perception of the availability of community support and the support needs of autistic people and people with disabilities, from their own perspectives and from those of their caregivers at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic in Quebec, to assess the association between the available support and the perceived stress levels to evaluate the role of perceived social support as a potential buffer of this association.
Methods: A total of 315 respondents participated in a 4-min online survey across the province of Quebec by snowball sampling. Community support was defined as availability of adapted healthcare, adapted information, adapted educational services and community services.
Results: The community support and services during the COVID-19 pandemic were not available or were not sufficiently adapted to their needs. About 40% of autistic people or people with disabilities and 44% of their caregivers perceived their days as being quite stressful or extremely stressful. This is twice the rate of that of the general population in non-pandemic time. Nevertheless, social supports can play a mediating role in attenuating the effects of the absence of adapted services on the stress level of this vulnerable population.
Conclusion: The non-availability of adapted services was related to an increase in the stress level in this population. Our study adds that other than social support, adapted healthcare/tele-healthcare and in-home support services could reduce the impact of the pandemic on the stress level of autistic people and people with disabilities. Adapted educational services and necessary equipment for online education for people without resources could reduce the impact on the stress level in caregivers. People with disabilities and their caregivers are one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Public health measures of containment and mitigation need to consider more their specific needs.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.17269/s41997-022-00671-3 | DOI Listing |
J Intellect Disabil
January 2025
Independent Consultant, UK and USA.
Person-centered planning has been shown to benefit people with disabilities and their quality of life. However, we have little knowledge of how person-centered planning can benefit staff and administration within a group home organization, as well as the extent to which it results in changes to organizational practices and procedures, as well as perceptions of people with disabilities. In this qualitative study, we explored the perspectives of organizational employees, an affiliating behavioral consultant, and residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, taking into consideration key insights from person-centered planning consultant-coaches, to understand the effects of a person-centered planning initiative on the group home organization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDisabil Rehabil Assist Technol
January 2025
Department of Design Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Purpose: Assistance from artefacts and humans are traditionally viewed as separate, and it is often up to the individual to try to combine the different kinds of assistance to suit their needs and preferences. The purpose of this study was to gain new insights into the co-existence of and synergies between artefactual and human assistance in the everyday lives of persons with physical and cognitive impairments, through exploring and analysing narratives of individuals who have first-hand knowledge and experience.
Methods: Seven individuals took part in semi-structured interviews, which were then analysed with qualitative content analysis, grounded in cultural-historical activity theory.
J Autism Dev Disord
January 2025
NevSom - Norwegian Centre of Expertise for Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Hypersomnias, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
The Aberrant Behavior Checklist (ABC) was originally developed to evaluate interventions, and is a well-established assessment tool for challenging behaviours in people with intellectual disabilities and autistic people. However, whether the ABC displays longitudinal measurement invariance (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnn Med
December 2025
School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Background: Evaluation of health system responsiveness (HSR) can improve patient satisfaction, promote health equity and enhance the quality of health services.
Objectives: To explore the differences in HSR among medical institutions at different levels and in various domains.
Methods: A multi-stage stratified sampling method was used to select 820 participants aged 18 years and older from Kunshan City, China.
Neurorehabil Neural Repair
January 2025
Department of Mental and Physical Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples, Italy.
Background And Objective: The metaverse refers to a digital realm accessible via internet connections using virtual reality and augmented reality glasses for promoting a new era of social rehabilitation. It represents the next-generation mobile computing platform expected to see widespread utilization in the future. In the context of rehabilitation, the metaverse is envisioned as a novel approach to enhance the treatment of human functioning exploiting the "synchronized brains" potential exacerbated by social interactions in virtual scenarios.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!