Attachment Trauma and Pathological Mourning in Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Clinicians know from experience that adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) are at risk for sub-optimal parental attachments and maltreatment from within and outside of the family. Until now, thinking about attachment in this population has been broad brush and has lacked a coherent conceptual framework to understand the role attachment plays in clinical problems. This has been largely due to a lack of reliable and valid attachment assessments for this population. This chapter addresses these issues using the first direct developmental adult attachment assessment that has demonstrated face and conceptual validity for this population: the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System. The chapter outlines some basic tenets of attachment theory as it pertains to trauma, including how trauma is related to mourning. It provides two case examples that exemplify the most common form of pathological mourning in the sample: unresolved chronic mourning.