Mindfulness and Acceptance in Developmental Disabilities: Introduction to the Special Issue

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Mindfulness and acceptance training programs and interven-tionshaverapidlygainedwidespreadinternationalinterest,buttheir use in the field of developmental disabilities has beenmuchslower.However,thefieldappearstohaveovercometheinertia associated with new approaches and is on the tippingpoint of having a major impact. A major reluctance to adoptthese new “therapies” may be attributable to the plethora offadsespousedbysomeprofessionalsindevelopmentaldisabil-ities. Furthermore, there was some question whether individ-uals with developmental disabilities would have the cognitivecapacity to understand and practice some of the foundationalconcepts associated with mindfulness-based procedures. Asattested by the current research, there is now optimism thatmindfulnessand acceptance proceduresmay prove tobe valu-able in assisting parents and paid carers to enhance the qualityof life of individuals with developmental disabilities (Noone2013;Russell2011).Indeed,there is also limitedresearchthatindicates individuals who function at mild, and perhaps mod-erate, levels of intellectual disabilities may benefit from learn-ing mindfulness-based procedures (Robertson 2011).The aim of this special issue was to bring together some ofthe innovative work being done on mindfulness and accep-tance training and interventions in the field of developmentaldisabilities. The first four papers deal with parents and paidcarers,followedbythreepapersthatdealwithindividualswithintellectual disabilities, and one involving both the individualswith intellectual disabilities and their carers. The final paperadds to the rapidly growing number of reviews of the extantmindfulness literature in developmental disabilities (e.g.,Harper et al. 2013; Hwang and Kearney 2013a, 2013b).Parents and Paid CarersThere are four papers in this section. Ferraioli and Harris(2013) compared the effects of mindfulness and skills-basedparent training programs for parents of children with autism.While both mindfulness-based and behavioral skills approachto parent training have been effective in decreasing parentalstress and increasing meaningful parent–child interactions,Ferraioli and Harris provide the first head-to-head comparisoninasmallpilotstudyof15parentsofchildrenwithautismwhowere randomized into two treatment groups. Both groupsparticipated in an 8-week training program that included di-dactics, discussion, role plays, and homework. Outcome mea-sures of parental stress and global heath were assessed atpretest,posttreatment,and3-monthfollow-up.Resultsshowedthe mindfulness group alone had a statistically significantimprovement on both outcome measures following the 8-week course. Positive changes were also noted for the behav-ioral skills group, but not at a statistically significant level.Beer et al. (2013) present a correlational study that inves-tigated factors related to parental well-being that could beamenable to intervention. The study was based on a sampleof28parents ofchildrenwith autismspectrumdisorder. Theyfound that higher levels of mindful parenting were related tolower levels of depressivesymptomsand stress, but unrelatedto anxiety. The also found that mindful parenting did notmediate the relationship between child behavior problemsand parental distress. Overall, the authors suggested thatmindful parenting may have benefits for parent’spsycholog-ical health. What would be interesting is to provide the sameparents with an 8-week mindfulness parenting course, as inthe Ferraioli and Harris study, and then assess the samecorrelations. We suspect the correlations would be somewhatdifferentbecauseofbetterunderstandingofmindfulnessprac-tices by the parents.Bethayetal. (2013) present a pilot study thatevaluated theeffects of a combined acceptance and commitment training(ACT) with training in applied behavior analysis (ABA)