Wandering Behavior Among Hospitalized Patients with Mental Health Issues and its Treatment Through Applied Behavior Analysis: case study

Abstract

The current study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of Applied Behavioral Analysis procedures for reducing the wandering behavior in hospitalized patients with mental health issues. It was hypothesized that there would be significant decrease in wandering behavior of hospitalized patients after application of Differential Reinforcement for Alternate Behavior (DRA). A functional analysis conducted together with the observation in order to select the participants according to the sample requirement. Total of 5 participants were selected through purposive sampling procedure. The entire study was divided into three phases: pre-intervention phase, intervention phase and post-intervention phase along with follow-up observations. The whole procedure was designed for one-month treatment plan with 4 days pre-intervention, 10 days intervention phase and 4 days post-intervention phase. Data was recorded for each phase and later statistically computed through sample mean method by using SPSS. The results of the study showed a significant decline in pinpoint behavior ‘'Wandering” which was replaced by the target behavior Sitting with the therapist . Factors like education level, family dynamics, rapport building, time selection and mood of the participant were found to be contributing factors in the process.