Purpose: People with intellectual disabilities often show challenging behaviour, which can manifest itself in self-harm or aggression towards others. Real-time monitoring of stress in clients with... Show morePurpose: People with intellectual disabilities often show challenging behaviour, which can manifest itself in self-harm or aggression towards others. Real-time monitoring of stress in clients with challenging behaviour can help caregivers to promptly deploy interventions to prevent escalations, ultimately to improve the quality of life of client and caregiver. This study aimed to assess the impact of real-time stress monitoring with HUME, and the subsequent interventions deployed by the care team, on stress levels and quality of life. Materials and methods: Real-time stress monitoring was used in 41 clients with intellectual disabilities in a long-term care setting over a period of six months. Stress levels were determined at the start and during the deployment of the stress monitoring system. The quality of life of the client and caregiver was measured with the Outcome Rating Scale at the start and at three months of use. Results: The results showed that the HUME-based interventions resulted in a stress reduction. The perceived quality of life was higher after three months for both the clients and caregivers. Furthermore, interventions to provide proximity were found to be most effective in reducing stress and increasing the client's quality of life. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that real-time stress monitoring with the HUME and the following interventions were effective. There was less stress in clients with an intellectual disability and an increase in the perceived quality of life. Future larger and randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm these findings. Show less
Vries, S. de; Oost, F. van; Smaling, H.; Knegt, N. de; Cluitmans, P.; Smits, R.; Meinders, E. 2023
People with severe intellectual disabilities (ID) could have difficulty expressing their stress which may complicate timely responses from caregivers. The present study proposes an automatic... Show morePeople with severe intellectual disabilities (ID) could have difficulty expressing their stress which may complicate timely responses from caregivers. The present study proposes an automatic stress detection system that can work in real-time. The system uses wearable sensors that record physiological signals in combination with machine learning to detect physiological changes related to stress. Four experiments were conducted to assess if the system could detect stress in people with and without ID. Three experiments were conducted with people without ID (n = 14, n = 18, and n = 48), and one observational study was done with people with ID (n = 12). To analyze if the system could detect stress, the performance of random, general, and personalized models was evaluated. The mixed ANOVA found a significant effect for model type, F(2, 134) = 116.50, p < .001. Additionally, the post-hoc t-tests found that the personalized model for the group with ID performed better than the random model, t(11) = 9.05, p < .001. The findings suggest that the personalized model can detect stress in people with and without ID. A larger-scale study is required to validate the system for people with ID. Show less
